Sermon for Christmas Eve 2013

Preached at Canadochly Lutheran Church on December 24, 2013
Scripture text: Isaiah 9:2-7

Merry Christmas everyone.

In my previous call in WV, I gained a reputation for being the pastor who didn’t like to play by the Christmas rules. Rules? There are rules to Christmas? Well, of course, there are. We all know them well. “Smile, it’s Christmas!” “Nothing bad can happen at Christmas.” “It’s the most perfect time of year.” Everything’s great and wonderful and happy. TV turns into Hallmark-y feel-good sappy programs where everything has a happy ending because it’s Christmas. Radio turns into Christmas carols non-stop 24/7. These are the rules. I hate them.

Yeah, there. I admitted it. I love Christmas, but I hate the Christmas rules. It’s just not me. I’m not a sentimental guy. I don’t go for extravagant displays of emotion about most things, and this time of year is no exception. I’m not one to put on a smile just because of a rule or a tradition or an expectation by others. If there’s a smile on my face this night, it’s because it’s real. It’s because I mean it.

And I don’t like schmaltzy saccharine-sweet pop culture either. I’m the kind of guy who thinks “Die Hard” is the best of all Christmas movies. It is totally unpretentious. There’s no sentimentality in it. No nostalgia (although it is over 20 years old now). No pretending that evil has disappeared. Bad things still happen. Evil still exists, even on Christmas.

While it’s still a bit of Hollywood fiction, it feels more real to me than most things about this holiday. It doesn’t play by the rules either, and I guess that’s why I like it.

What is real to you this night and what is just “playing by the rules?” Do we know where that line is drawn anymore? We go insane in our desperate attempts to create a perfect Christmas. We pack into stores and fight tooth and nail for that perfect ham for Christmas dinner or that perfect toy. We sing all the right songs and wear all the right clothes. We go to church, maybe the only time of year we do so. All for the sake of the rules. So I ask again, in the midst of all the traditions and expectations, the sentimentality and the nostalgia, what is real to you on this night?

For many, maybe even some of you, what is real is not the presents that will often lie broken and forgotten in a week’s time. It’s not in the visiting family and friends that will be gone again in a few short days. It’s not in the time off from work that lasts maybe 24-hours in our over-worked and under-paid world. Nor is it in the spirit of kindness, good cheer, and charity that will sadly vanish from our society like Cinderella’s carriage at midnight on the 25th. None of that is real because it is gone almost as quickly as it comes.

What is real is the pain that doesn’t disappear just because it’s Christmas Eve. What is real is the loneliness, which remains despite the cheer of this night. What is real is the illness that doesn’t stop ravaging our body despite the date on the calendar. What is real is the fear. Is there a job for me? Can I make ends meet to support myself, my spouse, my children?

Is that what is real to you this night? If so, then I am here to tell you that this night, the promise of this night, what is REAL about this night is especially for you.

You see, YOU are the reason we are here. YOU and your pain and your fears and your brokenness, that is the reason for the season. Oh, but Pastor, we say “Jesus” is the reason for the season. Yes, but why Jesus? Why did he come? Why did God bother to incarnate as a human being and be born in a manger on this night?

Why indeed if not to give God’s answer to the messed up world that we live in? A world in which pain, hypocrisy, grief, and guilt are real 24/7/365 for people. They don’t go away on this night any more than they do on any other, no matter what the rules are. We may pretend for this one day they aren’t there. But they come back. They always come back.

And it is because they haunt us so that this little baby is born in a manger. Christmas comes BECAUSE our world is so screwed up, not in spite of it. So...

• To the young man sitting on the edge of his bed, gun in hand, ready to end it all, I say to you that Christ came for you and he came because of your pain and broken heart.
• To the teacher who just learned one of his students was killed in an accident on the morning of Christmas Eve, I say to you that Christ came for you and he came because of your grief and shock at this tragedy.
• To the family who lays to rest one of their own on Christmas Eve, I say to you that Christ came for you and he came because of your sorrow and loss.
• To the one who lies in the hospital on this night uncertain of what disease keeps him there, I say to you that Christ came for you and he came because of your fears and anxieties about the future.
• To all of you here present who hide secret wounds behind a holiday smile, I say to you that Christ came for you and he came because of all you bear inside, the things the world never sees. Pain, guilt, regrets, whatever they are. He came for you and to give God’s answer to those things you carry within.

THAT is what’s real tonight. A world of sin and death and pain and a God who comes within it to set right what has gone wrong. Darkness into which the light has come.

It’s amazing to me how many of these classic Christmas scriptures begin in darkness. That’s not coincidental. “Those who have walked in darkness have seen a great light.” “A light shines in the darkness and the darkness has not overcome it.” We live in a dark world, my friends, but now the light shines out.

The funny thing about all our pretending is how it drowns out that light. What is light in the midst of light? Do you even see an individual light in a well-lit room? But make that room pitch black and your eyes will be drawn instantly to the flash of a candle being lit. You will never miss it.

That is what Christ is in our world. The flame of a candle in darkened room.

That flame burns in the darkness for you. Its light comes forth for you. For you, not as you pretend to be in the midst of holiday traditions, unwritten rules, and self-imposed demands of perfection, but for the real you: flawed, imperfect, and wounded. The Christ child comes for that person, living in that dark place. He comes for you in your grief, in your sorrow, in your fear and he says to you “I love you. I came for you. I will set right what has gone wrong for you.”

That is what is real. A savior come into a broken world and into broken lives to put things right. Christ comes in flesh. Christ comes as a human being with all that goes with it. All the pain, all the limitations, all the struggles. He knows what it means to be you.

And to make right what is wrong, he takes on all the world’s pain, all the world’s sin, into himself and goes to a cross. He does this for you; he dies for you. He dies to set things right, to bring an end to sin and death, to pain and sorrow. Then on the third day he rises and proves to all that it is done.

Jesus didn’t come into the world to give us one day of pretend bliss a year; he came to give us real joy for an eternity. This he did for you and you and everyone. To the hurting and the happy. That’s God’s answer to the evils that plague us in life. That’s what real on this night and every night. Light in the darkness. Our true hope, our real hope, in a broken world. Amen.

Sermon for Fourth Advent

Preached at Canadochly Lutheran Church on Sunday, December 22, 2013
Sermon text: Matthew 1:18-25

“What’s in a name?”

Behind every name is a story. A tale to be told...

My late grandfather was nicknamed “Bup” because a two-year old me couldn’t pronounce “Pop.” Sarah’s brother is called “Kik” for much the same reason. That’s a story.

My previous congregation and previous community was notorious for odd nicknames. There was a guy in town named “Bowhunk.” There’s was an elder in the congregation named “Hun” (as in Atilla.) His wife was called “Pan.” There are stories behind those names.

Emily is named for my wife’s two favorite singers. There’s a story there.

People have wondered about my email nickname “Avouz.” Is it French? No, it’s nerd, the name of a heroic elf I created for a Dungeons and Dragons game long ago. Another story.

I was to be called Michael, but around the time I was born the news in WV was full of stories about the murderer Michael Schwarz. So I ended up being Allen instead.

What stories do your names tell? Are you named for someone, an ancestor, a celebrity, a famous figure in history? Is your nickname an allusion to a funny story only a few close friends know (or are allowed to share)? Is there a reason for an unusual spelling or why you prefer to go by your middle name instead of your first name?

Names do have meaning. We may not approach the naming of a child in quite the same way as the great figures of the Bible do, but we have our stories too. We have our meaning and our understanding, our tales and our anecdotes. Our reasons why we call ourselves what we do. There is a purpose behind each of our names.

So when we come to a story like our Gospel lesson today, it should not seem so alien to us that God and his chosen people also have purpose behind why they name themselves and their children what they do. Abram becomes Abraham. Jacob becomes Israel. Hosea is told to name his children names that condemn the apostasy of the people in the time of his prophecy. Mary’s name is translated “rebellious one” (Told you she was a punk.)

And Jesus is to be named Jesus. (Or Yeshua, as I said to the children.) He is to be named this because “he will save his people from their sins.”

His story, his purpose, his reason for being is right there in his name.

He is not the first to bear this name in the Biblical narrative. There is, after all, a whole book of the Old Testament named for the other Yeshua. Joshua, the story of the leader of the people who brought them out of the wilderness into the Promised Land. That connection is not coincidental. This new Yeshua will bring out his people from the wilderness of sin and death into a good and bountiful place. Life abundant. Life eternal.

This new Yeshua will go among the people. He will teach them and remind them of the heart of God’s commandments and promises. Love your neighbor. Care for those who lack. Bind up the brokenhearted. Treat even the unclean with dignity worthy of any who are created imago dei, in the image of God. He will give to them samples of what that new life will be like by healing the sick, the blind, the lame, the leper. He will unburden the hearts of those bent low by the regret and guilt of sins unforgiven by giving them what they need most.

His whole life will demonstrate the truth of his name. He will save people from illness, from hatred, from guilt. But his name carries a universal ring to it. It is not “God will save some” or “God will save a few;” It is “God will save.”

So to spread this salvation as far and wide as God desires, Yeshua, Jesus must do the unthinkable. He must take on all the sin and all the death in the world. And these he must carry to the cross and have them nailed there in his body. He “became sin who knew no sin.” He embraced death: God incarnate dying for his created ones?

He had to. To fulfill the promise of his name, he had to. For God to save you and me and all, he had to. It was the course he plotted. The path he chose. The purpose for which he was named.

Jesus. Yeshua. God is our salvation. God will save you. God has saved you. Amen.

Funeral Sermon for Dennis Herbst

Preached at Canadochly Lutheran Church on Wednesday, December 18, 2013
Sermon text: John 8:31-36

This is wrong.

Everything about this is wrong. He was too young. Fifty-four is much too young to pass away. The circumstances of his death are wrong. A heart attack while driving on the road home. The timing of it is wrong. We're a week away from Christmas. Bad things aren't supposed to happen at Christmas time.

Wrong! Wrong! Wrong!

Of course, there's a lot that's wrong in our world. We see on the news each night of something else that's gone wrong. War, disaster, disease, poverty, hunger. All wrong. Even within ourselves there is much that is not as it should be. We treat strangers as enemies and those we love most we too often take for granted. Our lives are far too brief. Our loves too fragile. We are not honest with ourselves or with others. We cave into our fears instead of doing what is right and necessary. We do not appreciate what we have. We obsess over those things we desire most.

All of it has gone wrong.

We are trapped in many ways by the wrongness of this world. Imprisoned by it, and no proof of that is more powerful and more conclusive than what brings us here today. We are gathered to mourn the death of a beloved friend, brother, son, and husband. We are here to mark the death of Dennis Herbst, a death that is, like so much else in our world, wrong.

Why? That's always a difficult question, especially when there was so much that was right in Dennis' life. He was a good man, hard working. Loved his wife. Loved his family. A man of the earth, ever comfortable tending his garden or being out in the woods. A quiet but thoughtful man. It was a simple life, but a good one. There was nothing in it that merited it being cut short so early. Nothing in it that one can point to that says he had this coming.

But deserve has nothing to do with it when the world has gone wrong. And it has. It went wrong a long time ago. And the fact that it has is something that God has busied himself with ever since.

You see, God has been wanting to fix what has gone wrong. He's wanted to fix the ways in which we mistreat each other. He's wanted to fix the brokenness of the world around us. He's wanted to make it so that none ever need gather like this again, bound together in grief, bound together by death.

Death and sin are what have made things so wrong in our world. But God has a solution.

It may seem wrong for Dennis to have died so close to the Christmas holiday, but there is something fitting and right about our gathering together now, at this time. You see, that's the solution. No, not the day itself, nor all the human traditions that we've built up around it.

It's that baby that's the solution: Jesus, the Christ. God incarnate and come down to Earth. Here to fix what has gone wrong.

That's why he came. And all of Jesus' life he shows us how he's going to fix everything. He came among us and taught us that love is greater that hate. He showed us that even those society abandoned were people of immense value to God. Those broken by the world, those who infirm or diseased, he gave them healing. Those burdened by guilt, he forgave. He fixed what had gone wrong for them.

But those handful of examples were simply that: examples. What Jesus really came to do, he would do for everyone. And so to fix everything, he handed himself over to death. And we, the very people he came to help, nailed him to a cross and left him to die. And die he did. But it was a death with purpose; it seemed wrong, but it was not random or meaningless. No, he died for us. God died so that we could live.

It may be hard for us to wrap our brains around that. But it is that truth that sets us free. It is the truth that sets right what has gone wrong. You see the story doesn't end for Jesus on Good Friday. It doesn't end at the cross. There's more for him and for us.

What await Jesus after the cross is the empty tomb of Easter. He returns. He is resurrected. Life emerges where death once held fast. And what has happened to our Christ is what he now promises will happen to us.

St. Paul writes of this promise in that wonderful passage that I read from Romans at the beginning of our worship. “If we have been united with him in a death like his, we shall certainly be united with him in a resurrection like this.” That's how this works. That's how everything that is wrong becomes right. Dennis, you, me, all of us just as we will see death, we will also see resurrection thanks to Jesus Christ.

It's why he came. That promise is sure. It is sure for Dennis. He will live again. It is sure for you and for me. We will live again. Death has been defeated. What was wrong in the world is now made right in Jesus Christ. Amen.

Sermon for Third Advent

Preached at Canadochly Lutheran Church on December 15, 2013
Scripture text: Luke 1:46-56

(The inspiration for this sermon comes from this commentary article by Roger Wolsey.)

In the mid 1970s, musicians tired of the glamour and fanfare of disco and other popular music of the day began an underground movement. They began to form bands and write songs based on simple melodies, stripped down instrumentation, and lyrics with a definite anti-establishment theme. These groups had a dark edge, filled with anger with little sentimentality or respect for tradition. Their names were the Ramones, the Clash, Joy Division, and (most infamously) the Sex Pistols. They were punks and their music, which remains popular today, is known as punk rock.

If you looked over the width and breadth of my music collection, you would find very few musicians who did not owe some debt to the punk rock scene of the late 70s. They were hugely influential, in large part because they recaptured what rock-n-roll music was supposed to be about: youthful rebellion, standing up for yourself, and refusing to take the world as it came.

Refusing to take the world as it came? Distaste or even hatred of the status quo? I’ve heard something like that somewhere else recently. Oh, yeah, right here in our lessons today. In fact, in the very psalmody we just read together. The Magnificat, the song of Mary, mother of Jesus.

“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.”

My friends, that’s a song of revolution, of transformation, of defiance of the established order of things. That’s a punk rock song, written 2000 years before Malcolm MacLaren ever brought the Sex Pistols together. Mary was a punk.

In a lot of ways, that really shouldn’t surprise anyone. Think about it. She’s young, teenager. She’s pregnant, unmarried, and devoted to a God who seeks to change the system, to transform this world into something better. She is the epitome of what it means to be punk, again 2000 years before that movement sparked off.

I said last Sunday that hindsight is not always 20/20 after all and here is yet another example. We’ve always thought of the Pharisees as mustache-twirling villains when they were really like was just ordinary folk trying to do what they thought was right (and admittedly being wrong about it.) Here too, we’ve always seen Mary as this demure soft pretty little girl. Safe, kind, harmless but her song reveals that she is anything but. This is a person hungry for a new world, the one that God has promised to deliver. One where all the injustices of the past are made right. She is a revolutionary, a rebel, a devoted follower of a God who is likewise a revolutionary and a rebel.

We have all lived our lives seeing religion and the church as an intrinsic part of the establishment. Marx called religion the “opiate of the people” for precisely that reason; He saw it (as do we) as an institution dedicated to upholding the status quo. But the God Mary is speaking of, the one that is becoming incarnate in her very womb, is nothing like that.

No, this is a God who came to a herdsman of Ur named Abram and told him, “I am going to make of you a new nation, one that will change the world.” This is a God who, generations later, molded that man’s descendants into a chosen people by the leadership of Moses in the wilderness. This is a God who established with those people a just and good society, led by a kind named David. When those same people lost their way and gave in to injustice and oppression, this same God sent to them prophets to call them back to what they were meant to be. A new order, a new way of life, an example to the nations of what life could be. Of what life is supposed to be.

Life where none are left hungry. Life where no one is looked down upon or discriminated against for being different. Life where the sick are cared for. Life where everyone is valued and loved for who they are. That’s the world that God promised and that’s the world that Mary knows is coming through the birth of her son. A world that will be embodied in him, for those virtues, those hopes, those promises will be the core of his life.

And that we’ve seen. There is nothing about Jesus that fits in with the establishment, nothing about him that goes along with the status quo. He dares to heal the sick. He dares to welcome the outcast. He dares to love the unlovable. He too is a punk, a rebel with a cause, a revolutionary here bring about a new order.

Maybe we need to be punks ourselves. Maybe the Church needs to cease being part of the establishment and become an agent of change in our sick and twisted world. You see, I think that’s what Jesus is calling us to do. He’s calling us to join him in his revolution. Daring us to do as he does. To care for the sick, the hungry, the less fortunate. To love the unlovable. Challenging us to no longer be content with the world as it came, but to work to make something better of it.

Because that was what he did. That was Jesus’ whole life, even to the very end. In many ways, there are two dynamics to Jesus’ life and ministry, two elements to his revolution. One is the macro, where the whole world is changed, but there is also the micro where he comes into your life and mine to change us as individuals. You see, our establishment needs overthrown as well. We live in bondage to sin and death. We are prisoners of our own oppression. It is this twisted reality that we often foist onto others and that’s what makes the world what it is today. If Jesus’ revolution is to work, he can’t change one without the other.

And so to change us and to change the world, he allowed himself to be taken prisoner, tried as a rebel and insurrectionist, and then, as many of those guilty of those crimes often are, is put to death. But like everything else in his life, this death had purpose. It was the break the bondage we have found ourselves in and to bring about a new reality in each of us. Sin and death overthrown. The fulfillment of a promise God made long ago.

God’s punk revolution is at hand. A new world of justice, peace, and love awaits. And it is his Church, you and I, that he calls to be revolutionaries for the sake of others. A new world, a new order, life as it should be. The world that Mary sang of in the first punk rock song. The world that God has promised to all of us. Amen.

Postscript: Those who know a little about pop music and punk history might notice a few choice phrases ("new order," "not taking the world the way that it came"). That's completely intentional.

Sermon for Second Advent

Preached at Canadochly Lutheran Church on December 8, 2013
Scripture text: Matthew 3:1-12

“Hindsight is 20/20” or so the old saying goes. But what if I told you that isn’t always true? Sometimes, looking back on the past gives us a more distorted view of life than if we had actually been there. I first encountered this truth when I was studying for my undergraduate degree in history. One of my professors was full of pithy little sayings, many of them full of great truths. One of them was that “history is not the study of what happened; it is the study of what is remembered.” Sometimes, you have to dig through a lot of distortion, perception, and just plain prejudice to get at the truth.

Take the Pharisees for instance. That “brood of vipers,” as John the Baptist calls them in our Gospel lesson today. The perennial villains of the Gospel story, the bad guys, the ones who are just chomping at the bit to do evil each day. You can almost imagine them having this Snidley Whiplash mustache that they can twirl as the scheme and plot. I mean, that’s how we’ve always seen them. They’re the enemy of Jesus, the enemy of God, and all that they stand for.

That’s how we remember them, in large part because that’s how the Gospel writers wrote them. But as I said, hindsight is not always 20/20 and I’m here to tell you that we’ve got them wrong. Oh, there’s no question they did some pretty bad things, but our image of them as rotten to the core is not even remotely accurate.

If you could go back in time and sit down with a typical Pharisee of the 1st century and if asked them what they believed and how they practiced their faith, you’d come up with a list that really isn’t all that different than what you and I might create if asked that same question. These were people who wanted to do what was right. People who wanted to be closer to God, wanted to do good. They wanted to be pure, they wanted to be righteous.  And they tried very hard at it, as many of us do.

Why then did they end up at odds with characters like John the Baptist or Jesus himself if that was their goal? If these were truly people who wanted to genuine followers of God’s way, why were not among Jesus’ most fervent allies? Admittedly, some were, but for the rest who came to oppose him, it’s probably very hard for us to imagine why.

Many of you who are here are retired or have been in your chosen professions for a great long time. Imagine for a moment some hotshot kid walks into your job and proceeds to tell you that everything you’ve been doing at that job for all those years has been wrong. He tells you that you don’t know what you’re doing. He tells you that even the fundamentals of your skills are incorrect. THAT is what it was like for the Pharisees to hear the preaching of John the Baptist for the first time.

They thought they had the answers. They believed they knew what God wanted. And along comes this upstart, this wild man of the wilderness, who dares to tell them they’ve got it wrong and they’ve had it wrong for the whole of their lives. Their teachers had it wrong, several generations of wrong. Wrong! Wrong! Wrong! That’s all they heard out of John’s mouth and it’s hard for us to imagine how shocking that must have been to them.

They were the experts. They were the ones who had poured over the Scriptures. They were the ones who supposed to have it right. They did have it right, or so they thought. How dare this madman tell them otherwise!

The truth is, the madman was right. The Pharisees did have it wrong. They had it wrong because all their piety, all their morality, all their righteousness was turned inward. It was all about being pure. Not eating this. Not touching that. Not associating with “those people.” But God isn’t interested in purity. What he’s interested in is compassion. And that’s what John teaches. Give to those in need. Sacrifice for the sake of others. True righteousness is not about the good that you are, it’s about the good that you do for others.

When Jesus shows up not too much later, he puts that very idea at the heart of his ministry. The sick, he heals. The hungry, he feeds. The rejected and outcast, he welcomes. The sinner, he forgives. If God was so concerned about purity, as the Pharisees believed, Jesus would never have gone near any of them. But time and again, we see the Messiah in the midst of the impure and unworthy. Again, how shocking must that have been for those who thought they had it right all along.

How shocking is it for us when we think we’ve got it right and the words of the Baptizer and the actions of the Christ challenge us to our very core? How many of us have come to believe in our own righteousness, in our own rightness? We are good people! How dare some upstart tell us otherwise!

The esteemed Bishop of Rome, Pope Frances, recently released his first encyclical, Evangelii Gaudium, in which he criticized the disparity between the rich and the poor in our world caused by unchecked capitalism. How dare he speak ill of our economic system! What is he, some sort of Marxist? A communist pope? No, a Christian one, one that sees that our economic system, like all human-created works, has its flaws and with those flaws come injustices that need to be addressed. It is we who have enshrined capitalism as an unquestioned good. We who may have gotten it wrong.

I hear Westboro Baptist Church is planning another protest surrounding the funeral of celebrity Paul Walker. Now most of us, I think, would not agree with that church’s extreme tactics, but many of us are convinced that homosexuality is a pretty egregious sin, one that the Bible concerns itself a great deal about. So much that it dedicates seven verses speaking to the issue. Seven...out of over 50,000. I don’t know about you, but it seems to me that who a person sleeps with is not as big a deal to God as we make it out to be. Maybe we’ve got it wrong.

If you’ve read the newsletter, you’ve heard my thoughts on the so-called “War on Christmas” that comes into vogue this time every year and that nonsense about which greetings are appropriate and which are not. For one month a year, we turn Christmas into a bludgeon with which to hammer people whose beliefs and practices are different from our own.

The most Christian time in our society, a time of peace, goodwill, charity, and kindness and we are seeking to transform it into a time of anger, animosity, distrust, and outright hatred. It’s not them who are waging war on Christmas. It is us. We’ve got it wrong.

So how many of you are feeling a little uncomfortable in your seats? How many of you are angry with me for saying what I just did? If so, you’re beginning to understand what it was like for the Pharisees to hear the words of John the Baptist. Now you know why they sought to kill him and also the one who came after him.

Truth is, my friends, we are often the Pharisees of this day and age. It is not comfortable or pleasant to have our long-held beliefs challenged. But that is what the Baptizer does even now across the ages, reminding us that it’s not about purity. It’s not about how good we are, it’s about the good that we do for others.

When we remember that, the Pope’s criticisms make sense. We see the truth of them. The LGBT community becomes human again, just people like us. And maybe it’s not such a good idea to lambast some poor underpaid store clerk for not giving us the proper Christmas greeting. But even more important than these examples is how we start to understand the mind of Christ.

It’s not about purity. It’s about compassion. If it was about purity, Christ’s mission here on earth would have been pointless. None of us lives a sinless life. None of us are pure enough. None of us righteous enough. None of us good enough. If that was to be the heart of our salvation, then there would be no salvation.

Christ is pure. Christ is righteous. Christ is good. But that’s still not what matters. What matters is the good he can do for others, for us. And in that compassion, he did come down to earth. He was born of a virgin in a stable on Christmas night. He grew up and then went to the cross. He died a bloody impure death because that was what was necessary to save us. He did the ultimate good for our sake. He showed us what righteousness really is. What goodness really is. A life given for others. A life given for you and me. Amen.

Sermon for the First Sunday of Advent

Preached at Canadochly Lutheran Church on December 1, 2013
Scripture texts: Romans 13:11-14, Matthew 24:36-44

"Those who see God as angry, do not see him rightly." - Martin Luther, Luther (2003)

When I was a teenager, my church youth group would take a trip each year from WV to the mountains of central PA to the Creation festival. Three days of Christian music, preaching, and camping out under the stars. Some of my best memories of those years of my life took place at that festival, not the least of which is that is where I met my first love.

One night, as my friend Doug and I were walking back from a concert, we were spontaneously invited by another group of youth. Among them was this girl, Jen. She was funny, cute, and for this oft-bullied nerd,  a girl that actually seemed to WANT to talk to me. I fell head over heels almost immediately.

Over the next several years or so, I pursued her like a man obsessed. She was the one I wanted more than anything else. But she was not quite as enthusiastic in her affections for me as I was for her. I remember very clearly one conversation we had many years ago now. She told me that she felt I was more in love with the person I thought she was than who she really was.

She walked out of my life not long after that conversation.

Truth is, she was right. I wanted so badly for Jen to be what mind and heart imagined her to be that I never really got to know the real person that she was. That didn’t really happen until just recently in my life. Through the wonders of Facebook, I’ve reconnected with her. Obviously circumstances are much changed now from those halcyon days of my youth. I am a happily married man; she has a wonderful boyfriend who loves her. But as we’ve gotten to know each other again, I’ve started to realize who she really is; I’m getting to know the real person and I’ve truly learned just how off-base everything I believed about her was.

I have woken up. The dream is over. Reality is now what I see.

I can’t help but wonder if it wasn’t something like what I just described that motivated and inspired St. Paul to write what he did in Romans 13, our second lesson today. How many people in his audience thought they knew who this Jesus guy was really about by projecting on to him what they wanted to be true about him? How many of us think we know Jesus by projecting our wishes, our desires, and our delusions onto him?

Wake up! Time to stop dreaming! Snap out of it! Things are not as they seem. It is past time we stopped seeing things as we wish they were, and instead see them for what they truly are.

Nowhere in the Scriptures is a better test to help us see the real Jesus than in those apocalyptic texts that so popular in the lectionary around this time of year.

When I was last with you, I expressed my distaste for these texts, precisely because we project so much of our own anxieties and misunderstandings onto them, and by extension, onto Jesus himself. The end result is the person of Jesus in our minds becomes distorted into something utterly unlike who he really is.

I’ll prove it to you. Let me read again what Jesus says in our Gospel lesson today: “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.”

What emotion do you feel when hearing that? Are you frightened? Does this scare you? Do you wonder if you will be the one taken or the one left? A lot of Christians do. Maybe some of us are among them.

Jesus isn’t telling us this to frighten us, but that’s what we hear. We wonder

• “Have I done enough?”
• “Am I good enough?”
• “Maybe if I give a few extra dollars today in the plate, that’ll do it.”
• “Maybe if I go volunteer at a soup kitchen tomorrow, then Jesus will really love me.”
• “I should probably share that picture of Jesus on Facebook again. Prove to him that I really do believe.”

That’s what we do. We hear a text like this, or pretty much any about the end times, and we wonder what will happen to us. And we try to calm those anxieties by doing something, anything that we think will appease this monstrous judgmental God we know is coming to damn us.

Wake up! That nightmare is false. It is a lie. Our God is nothing like that. If this is what any of us believe Christ to be, I’m here to tell you we’ve got it wrong.

This story is not here to frighten us. It is here to remind us of the unexpectedness of Christ’s appearance. God became incarnate of a virgin and was born as Jesus and almost no one in the world knew it had happened. His mother and father, a few shepherds, and a handful of foreign magicians. That’s it. His return will be no different. Christ himself has told us no one will see it coming.

But why does that frighten us? Have I done enough? Am I good enough? No, we haven’t, but that also doesn’t matter. Because Christ has come to each of us, marked us with his seal in baptism. Told us that he loves us without condition.

That’s the Jesus I want to know, the real one. The one that loved you and me so much that he died for us and for our salvation. The one who is coming back to welcome us and embrace us, not to punish us or to judge us unworthy. That’s who our Lord really is. We keep wanting to turn him into some sort of boogeyman. Straighten up or Jesus is gonna get ya!

But when I look to the cross and the person I see there is not some monster lurking the shadows waiting to snatch me up and devour me. No, he is the one who sees me truly, warts and all, and loves me anyway. Loves me beyond words. One who died to save me and rose again to give me life. And he does for me, so too for all of you. That’s who Jesus really is. Wake up, my friends. Wake up and see him. Amen.