Enthronement . . .

      One of the great challenges of preaching the Christmas narrative is keeping people interested.  I must confess, there is often a desire on my part just to let the narrative speak for itself.  What can we gathered here this afternoon add to the likely frantic and anxiety-inducing experience of the Mary and Joseph?  More to the point, do you really need me telling you how they must have felt being forced to make this journey to be registered by an absolute power, Caesar?  What can we gathered here right now add to the joyous noise of the heavenly choir?  What can we here now add to the disbelief and curiosity of the shepherds?  None of us know what it is like to be shunned or mocked, do we?  None of us have ever experienced ridicule for telling our experiences.  Most difficult of all, though, might be the pondering of Mary, the mother of Jesus, as she considers in her heart all these things she sees and hears.

     Thankfully, in the Anglican tradition, we are not assigned only one reading at our Eucharistic gatherings.  The Feast of the Nativity or the Feast of the Incarnation, if you prefer, like all other Great Feast Days, has an appointed OT reading, Psalm, NT reading, and a Gospel reading.  Such a practice, among other things, allows us to approach the significance of this event from different perspectives in God’s Salvation History.  What do I mean?  I could launch into a sermon on Isaiah and how the Baby Jesus fulfils the promises made by God through the words of the prophet, promises that were not understood correctly until Jesus was raised from the dead and Ascended to His Father.

     I could also launch into a sermon from the letter to Titus, reminding us all how the letter is addressed to all of us in the Church and of our hope and calling in this Baby.  More specifically, we could consider that wonderful collect in light of this letter that reminds us that Jesus was a pattern for holy living every bit as much as He was our salvation.  We need such reminders from time to time, right?  “Christian leaders” have been trying to convince others that it is their godly imperative to be loyal to those other than Christ for the good of the country, to be hawks on immigration or care for the poor and needy in our midst, and do any number of other activities that denounce the belief that Jesus is Lord—and that’s just this week’s FB and headline feeds on my computer, this week when the world around us is keen on “celebrating” this holiday.  You may have had a few more feeds that just popped into your minds.

     I could also launch into one of the themes of the Gospel story and do my best to capture your attention from an unusual angel.

     This year, though, I was either pushed or pulled into the Psalms for my sermons.  I hope it was pulled, as in drawn by God, to the psalms we read tonight and tomorrow in our celebration of the Incarnation.  But I acknowledge that Adventers had a hand in my consideration and discernment.  Those in the Bible Study before Thanksgiving complained that we seldom hear sermons on the psalms, as it is, but never on important days.  I had reminded us in class again that Jesus Himself stated that all the Psalms were about Him.  For those of us not as familiar with the Bible as we wish, Jesus famously declares later in the Gospel from which we read this year to His disciples that everything written in the torah of Moses, the Prophets and in the Psalms is about Him.  As I have endeavored to show those who attend the Monday morning Bible Study for several years now, we have made it to Psalm 70-71, the Psalms retell the story of the Bible in lyrical or poetical form.  One of the genres of the Scriptures is lyrical or poetic.  It makes sense.  Some of us prefer the creativity of poetry and lyrics to the “just the facts’ histories or the letters or the prophesies.  God caused His story to be written in so many ways, in part, because we find ourselves drawn to different genres.  That all being said, consider this your commercial to join us on Monday mornings, if you wished to learn more about this creative presentation of God’s faithfulness, love, and mercy.  Trust me, I will only be skimming the top of the psalm.

      At this service, we read the 96^th Psalm.  The psalm is significant in that it comes from a subsection of the Fourth Book of the Psalms called the enthronement psalms or the “God reigns” psalms.  One of the claims of this book is that God is above us.  Most of us would say “duh” at that statement, but then how many of us really try to live our lives following His torah, as if we BELIEVE it?  You know, doing what He says we have to do, not doing those things He says we are not to do, and repenting when we fail—those kinds of things.  In an amazing way, and written long before Jesus was born, the “God reigns” psalms testify to the fact that God reigns . . . even when the world would love to convince us otherwise.  Israel, of course, would make that same claim.  Like us, though, God’s reign was not yet complete.  The vagaries of life still occurred.  Sometimes they were defeated and enslaved.  Often they were mocked.  They suffered privation and disease and death.  Sounds a lot like us, right?

     Though we understand that we remember that this night is, in some sense, the beginning of God’s enthronement, the world would like us to believe otherwise.  War still reigns in eastern Europe.  The economic condition of the world seems a bit out of control with inflation and supply chain issues.  In case we forgot, there is still a pandemic raging around us.  Heck, experts tell us that we are in the midst of a triple-demic now.  At least our politicians are look out for us and trying to govern us well . . . says no one ever now.  Heck, nature seems to have lost her mind.  We were below zero last night in much of Tennessee, and substantial snow was not too far to the north of us.  Just remember, it could be worse.  At least you did not deal with a blizzard and a volcano simultaneously like those people in Hawaii.

     I am glad many of you are chuckling.  A number of you are probably quickly adding to a list in your minds.  I am just glad none of us gathered are suffering from the consequences of broken relationships or mental or physical health issues or even stalked by death.  That ended the chuckling.

     The world out there, my friends, sees all that happening in our lives and thinks we are the crazy ones for gathering tonight to celebrate the fact that God came down to dwell with us, to be one of us, and to walk that path that leads to Calvary and His enthronement.  In their eyes and minds, we are wasting valuable time that could be used for last minute shopping or watching a bowl game or drinking.  But we braved the elements and the traffic to remind ourselves of the hope and promise this night brings.

     I will not spend too much time really breaking down this psalm for you.  My hope is that I touch on it enough that you will take the Order of Worship home and ponder it more in your hearts later, maybe after the little ones are asleep and the gifts are appropriately wrapped and assembled.  But the psalm makes two major claims, among other teachings, for why we celebrate this night and why we should have hope in the promises He gives us through the birth of this baby.

     The first is the simple reminder that God alone made everything, the heavens and the earth.  We no longer understand cosmology the way the psalmist’s audience did, but the gods of nations were thought to be strongest in particular places on the earth.  Athena was in Athens; Ra was in Egypt; Marduk in Babylon; the Ba’al’s in various towns in Canaan, and so on.  The psalmist reminds us that God made everything.  In our Prayer Book language we would say He is the Creator of all that is, seen and unseen.  Were the gods real, they depended on God for their strongholds.  You can imagine how well that understanding was received in the ANE, especially when the nations of the world were kicking and insulting a defeated Israel.

     But the psalmist does not stop with the reminder that God created all things.  There is, admittedly, a play on words in the psalm that you and I do not hear as most of us do not speak Hebrew.  The poet reminds us that the gods, the elohim, of the other countries are truly elihim, worthless things.  Why?  Because they neither hear nor speak.  Pray to an idol and what response do you get?  Nothing.

     Now you begin to understand on one level why we celebrate the Incarnation, the Holy Mystery of God becoming human and dwelling among us.  In one sense, it is a polemic against the idols and those who worship idols.  Think of all the Gospel writers’ and NT writers’ claims about seeing His face, hearing His voice.  Imagine you lived in the culture in which this was written and heard those claims.  They would seem the claim of a bunch of madmen and madwomen, to coin CS Lewis’ imagery.  But God becoming man meant that God knew us in every way, as oppose to those idols that exist in a theoretical understanding.

     I know, I know, we are too smart to worship idols in today’s world, right?  Nobody we know trusts in their armed forces for absolute protection or the enforcement of their desires, right?  Nobody we know defends or attacks capitalism with any kind of fervor, as if it blesses or enslaves them, right?  Nobody we know sacrificed their families, not just their firstborn sons, to climb the economic or corporate or social ladder, right?  The list goes on and on, but those around us worship idols not unlike Mars, or Mammon, or Molech.  They just have different names.

     But we see and hear the frustration.  I paid my dues.  I was loyal.  I did more than was asked of me.  This is what I get for my faithfulness and trust?

     Part of the comfort and promise of this night is the reminder that God truly became human.  He was born to a faithful couple in an out-of-the-way province.  Based on their presentation of Jesus on the eighth day, we know they were not rich.  Were we to make this plan, we would have Him born in Rome, or at least the Temple in Jerusalem.  But He was born in Bethlehem.  He was raised by a carpenter.  He had brothers and sisters.  He saw the effects of oppression everywhere He went; heck, He experienced oppression even from those whom He came to save.  But how much more approachable is God knowing all this? 

     Make no mistake either, my friends, the world of Antiquity thought the Jews and the Christians every bit as gullible or deluded as some in the world think us.  In some cases, the world around them thought them even dumber.  It was axiomatic that what happened on earth was reflected in the heavens and vice versa.  If Babylon or Rome conquered Judea, it meant that Marduk or Jupiter had defeated Yahweh.  If a carpenter’s Son was put to death by crucifixion, He was dead!  Yet, despite the seeming failures and even deaths, Jews and Christians were alike in that they knew God reigned and would dwell among His people.

     Were that the only reminder of the psalm, that God reigns and will reign one glorious Day, it would be enough.  But God always gives us more than we can ask or imagine.  At the beginning of this sermon I told you the psalm came from a subsection of the psalter called the enthronement psalms.  Eight psalms, from 93-100, are psalms that proclaim God’s reign and what it will be like.  I also reminded you that this Feast of the Nativity was the first step in the enthronement of Jesus.  His enthronement will include the miracles that testify to His identity and authority; His Passion and Death will prove Him faithful to God and worthy of our praise; His Resurrection will instruct us that He alone was faithful to God; and His Ascension will signify to us that He now sits at the right hand of the Father, making intercession for us, until He comes to establish once and for all eternity His kingdom.  But while we wait for that enthronement, another has already taken place.

     The psalm captures two ideas about God that are challenging for some to reconcile.  How can God be the Creator of all that is, seen and unseen, and yet care about me?  It seems crazy to think that He who fashioned a cosmos some 16.2 billion light years across knows you or you or me intimately.  More amazingly, what begins tonight was His effort to reconcile each one of us, and each person who has ever lived or will live, to Him, that we might one glorious Day experience an intimate and familiar relationship with Him, as did Adam and Eve before sin.  But that is the promise, and it is one we know is already being fulfilled.

     I mentioned the Ascension, when Jesus went to sit at the right hand of the Father.  Why did He do that?  Why not stay and establish His kingdom permanently?  It is an answer we might know fully until we stand before Him, but we know at least a part of the answer.  Jesus leaves so that the Advocate can come.  While Incarnated, Jesus’ work was concentrated in a time and place we call 1^st Century Judea.  By virtue of His Ascension and our own baptism, though, another enthronement has occurred.  To use the language of other denominations, He has been enthroned in our hearts.  Good, I see nods of understanding.  What does such an understanding mean?  Jesus Himself instructs us.  We will do greater things than He and He will be interceding for all who will glorify Him in their lives.  All who are baptized into His death and His Resurrection claim Him as Lord.  The world misunderstands that Christians are solely concerned about the after-life.  To be sure, for some, it is the primary and sole focus.  But by virtue of our baptism, my friends, you and I are sealed by the Holy Spirit and marked as Christ’s own forever.  More amazingly, we are promised by Him that He will be glorified in our lives through our obedience to and love of Him.  We can tackle evils in His Name.  We can preach peace in His Name.  We can do whatever He commands, confident that He will glorify us.  That is the promise.  That is the reminder we give ourselves when we ask for remission of our sins all the blessings and benefits of His Passion.  That is the prayer we make when we ask for our daily bread and for things to be on earth as on heaven in the prayer that He gave us.  That is the covenant that He sealed with each one of us with that broken body and blood that He gave for our lives and the life of the world.

     All of that, though, is impossible without that first step which we remember and celebrate tonight.  All of that we ponder as we sing Silent Night and Joy to the World and remind ourselves in modern lyrics, joining our voices with that angelic host, as we focus our attention on small village in an out-of-the-way province.  The world and many of us, might think we would have a better plan to declare God’s glory and to begin His enthronement.  But such was His love of each one of us, such was His desire that we might choose Him as Lord, that He came and dwelt among us, taught among those like us, and died like each one of us is likely to die.  But when He seemed a defeated king, God raised Him that we might know His power.  And now He chooses to enthrone Himself in vagabonds and ordinary men and women like you and me, that others in the world may come to know His love of them, until He comes again to re-create all that has been marred.  It is a story of glorious promise and wonder, a story that we and those out there need to hear in our words and see in our lives!

 

In His love,
Brian†