I shared with the earlier crowd the challenge of preaching on this night. There is a certain sense where I think we would all do well to sit in silence for several minutes and let the story speak to us. Of course, we Episcopalians do not like silence very much. Heck, even when we sing “Let all mortal flesh keep silence,” we are singing! But that leaves preachers with a challenge. How do we connect the story afresh? How do we remind those gathered of its importance in our lives, in our case, sitting some 9000 miles to the WNW and 2000 years later?
Thankfully, and
mercifully, as in most liturgical traditions, we are assigned different
readings for each gathering of worship.
Each time we gather to celebrate the Eucharist, we read from the OT, the
Psalms, the NT, and the Gospel – I know, in Easter season we substitute Acts
for the OT. But you get my point. We do it in part to expose ourselves to more
of the Bible. Over the course of the
three-year liturgical cycle, we will read a great chunk of the Gospels, a
number of Psalms, portions of most of the NT, and a nice sliver of the OT. But that list of assigned readings, when
functioning at their best, also helps us preachers approach the person of Jesus
from different perspectives in Salvation History. What do I mean?
I could have
launched into a sermon tonight 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 have launched 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 headlines in your own feeds that just popped
into your minds. I could even have
launched into one of the themes of the Gospel story and do my best to capture
your attention from an unusual angle.
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 in the Church, as it is, but never on important days
in the life of the Church. 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 tonight 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 re-tell 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
instructions of the letters or interpretative problems of 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 tonight.
At this service
we read the 97th Psalm. It is
the fifth psalm in a collection of eight psalms known as Enthronement psalms or
“God reigns” psalms. Before you nod off
assuming you know everything I am going to say with a great big “Duh!,” think
about it for a second. Does the world
seem to agree with the claim of God’s people throughout history that He
reigns? I mean, in the days the psalms
were composed, God’s people dealt with wars, with diseases, with economic
privations, with oppression, with family dysfunctions, and with death. WE don’t have any of those problems today,
right? Why are you laughing? And if you and I see how little the world
seems to reflect the reign of a good, loving, holy, and whatever adjective we
want to add to an all-powerful God, what do you think those outside these walls
see and believe? More to the point,
though, do we live as if we believe God is enthroned? Or would our friends and family say we
sometimes live as if we believe it for the occasional hour and a half on a few
Sundays a year? Ouch! I see the squirms. Unfair?
I guess it depends upon the observations of those closest to us.
The Enthronement
Psalms, 93-100, exist in the Fourth Book of the Psalter, which, among other
things, describes our existence today.
God reigns, but He has not finished re-creating the world. He has begun that work, but He has put off
completing it. Carola† likely spoke to
you about the tension between the already and the not-yet during her Christmas
sermons when she served here. Good. I see some faint nods of remembrance and
wonder how I know what she preached almost a decade ago. We know how Salvation History ends; we just
do not know when. One day, Jesus will
dwell among us and we will speak and talk and, seeing how we are all good
Episcopalians and He will have completed His work, we all may even drink from
the cup of joy with Him—though that is a sermon for another time. For now, we gather and remind ourselves of
God’s promises, promises which begin to be fulfilled by this first step which
we call the Feast of the Incarnation.
To be clear,
what we do is not unlike what the Ancient Jews did when a new king ascended the
throne and these psalms were read at his coronation. Whether Israel was engaged in wars or having
supply chain issues or suffering from plagues or crazy weather or anything
else, a king would ascend the steps to be enthroned as these psalms were
proclaimed. The psalms reminded the
soon-to-be king of his chief obligation to teach the people the torah of God
and of the fact that, as exalted as he perceived himself to be or was perceived
by the people, he was but a steward of God.
Make no mistake, the king was a steward of God’s treasured possession,
Israel, but he was still just a steward.
For the people witnessing the coronation, it was a reminder of who was
truly in charge. The king was the
anointed of God and descended of David.
Notice, that is a little “a” and not a capital “A”. To use vernacular, we would say the king was
the preceeder of Jesus, the Anointed. Kings
of Israel were supposed to rule as if they believed this about themselves. Newsflash!
Most did not.
Kings, just like
us, were sinners in need of redemption.
Most ignored God’s instructions during their reigns. Very few kings were judged as faithful by God
in the books of Kings and Chronicles.
Understand, too, faithful does not equal holy. David was faithful, but he was not holy. But each time he sinned and God pointed it
out, David repented and accepted God’s decisions. To put in the language of today and our
liturgy, David tried not to sin, but, when he did, he repented and returned to
the Lord.
Among the
teachings in this psalm are the reminders that God manifests Himself to His
people through theophanies and through the created order. As you read this psalm later, I hope, notice
the examples given by the psalmist.
There are no specific examples cited, but the words of the poet likely call
to mind specific examples in our heads, especially if we read the Bible or went
to Sunday School as a child. For
example, does the psalmist have in mind the theophany associated with the
giving of the torah on Sinai after the Exodus in verses 2-6, or does the
psalmist have in mind what you and I might call a thunderstorm that shakes the
earth and rattles our windows today? Or
both? They are not necessarily exclusive
images.
Another
important teaching, of course, is the reminder that the idols of the world
cannot manifest themselves, cannot speak, and certainly cannot hear. I know, I know, we are gathered to celebrate
the hope and promise that this Baby truly is the Son of God. None of us really want to think of idols, but
we are a people sent back out into the world by God. How does the god Capitalism answer our needs
today? How does the god War instruct
Russia and Ukrainians and us today? Just
to give us all a few more spiritual wedgies, how does our worship of the god
War cause us to forget our priorities?
What money spent on the next super weapon could have been better spent
on caring for our citizens? What lessons
do we take away from the god Fame? For
all our clever advancements, little has changed in the world. Humanity chases after all kinds of idols, of
its own creation, which causes human beings to lose those things they most
treasure. What do we ultimately
treasure? Therapists and mental health
experts remind us we want to be known and loved and valued. Their instruction saturates the airways and
internet to the point that irreverent adult comedies like Rick & Morty can
explore that need while making us laugh at ourselves. But the One who has always told us of His
love for us, and Who eventually proved that love to each one of us, is the One
who comes among us and reminds us this night.
Most of us gathered
tonight want to know that God is real, that God loves us, that God has
something better in store for each of us.
We want to believe what the world tells us is a fairy tale is true. Oh, I know, some of you may have been dragged
here mostly against your will by a beloved matriarch or patriarch in your
family. Some may have come and not even
know why. But if you are paying
attention at all to the readings and to me, I think we both know my statement a
moment ago is true. We all want to know
it’s true, that the loved one who introduced us to God was not duped or
gullible or crazy. But how can we know?
In truth, we are
no different than those who came before us.
Sure, we have handy technological advances about which our ancestors
could never have dreamed, but we have all the same doubts, same fears, same
desires, and even the same skepticism.
You don’t think Mary’s neighbors whispered about her behind her
back? You don’t think Joseph’s buddies
were certain he was cuckolded? You don’t
think those shepherds would have strolled into town anyway, absent the angelic
host singing praises to God? You don’t
think those who heard the story later would have argued saying that the Son of
God would be born in Rome, or at least in Jerusalem? The details we are given speak to all that
doubt, all that skepticism.
But the greatest
detail is the Nativity we celebrate tonight.
Tonight, and for the next twelve days, we remind ourselves that God
became fully human and dwelt among us.
He came not with privilege and power, but with humility. Were we the author of the story, He would be
born in the halls of power, to parents who mattered to the world. But He came in silence and meekness to an
outlying village, to common parents. He
lived and worked and loved under oppression.
He experienced the same hurts and booboo’s and temptations we experience
as children growing up, but He stayed focused on accomplishing the Will of His
Father who sent Him. In the end, it as a
Holy Mystery. Rational explanations and
discussions fail, and we are left with faith.
But in the Anglican wing of the Church, we remind ourselves it is a
reasonable faith. Before He did it, God
said He would do it. Unlike the idols
whose silence is deafening, God, the God who saves, told us repeatedly He would
come, that He would make intimate communion with Him possible once again, that
we would know the love He has for each and every single person in His creation,
including us. And then, once done, God
told us He had done it!
Like most things
of God, His faithful people misunderstood, but who could blame us? The world seduces us and convinces us of the
false narratives that draw us away from our Father in heaven. But that we might know these false narratives
of the world were untrue, that we might know His redemptive power, God became
human and lived among us, making Him even that much more approachable, that
much more relatable, in part. How many
in David’s family truly understood the enthronement that was to come? How many who saw the Baby or Toddler or Child
or Teenager understood who He was? How
many of the experts were convinced that God’s glory was achieved with might and
power and routing oppressing armies? How
few foresaw that this Baby would one day hang on a cross, vilified by those
claiming to serve God and betrayed by those whose very existence He came to
save, and die? And, just as we know
today, in Antiquity dead was dead.
Nobody believed that God would raise Him on the Third Day. The Apostles had to drink and eat and still
learn from Him to believe. The disciples
had to see it for themselves. And the
world laughed at them just as it laughs at us today.
It all begins
with God becoming this Baby, being born to this girl. His true enthronement begins with swaddling
clothes, a manger, and a hodgepodge of witnesses. And us.
It is of no
mistake my friends that this liturgy ends differently than most. In a few moments we will pray, we will
confess our sins, we will be absolved, and we will eat His Flesh and drink His
Blood. Then we will be sent. But part of our love of this liturgy is the
end. Before I dismiss us to the work
that God has given each one of us to do, I will read from the Gospel of
John. We will be reminded once again
that the Word became flesh and lived among us.
And we will be reminded once again that through the work, life, death,
and Resurrection of the Baby born this Silent Night we are made heirs, sons and
daughters, princesses and princess, of the Creator of all that is, seen and
unseen. And as our last acts, we will
light our own candles from the flickering flame of the Paschal Candle. And in that liturgy we will be reminded yet
again how God works His plan of salvation.
Though the darkness is thick and cold outside, and the lights will be
turned off in here, the light will shine forth in the darkness as it spreads
throughout all of us gathered. That
spreading will remind each of us how God is enthroned in our lives, one person
telling another person. Individually,
the flames are not special. They are not
even as bright as our new bullhorn out there.
But over time, the flames grow and grow.
One becomes two becomes four becomes all of us. And the Light, His Light, shines in us and
through us, reminding that His glory shines forth in all those who confess Him
as Lord and who live and die as He instructs.
In a way, it is a metaphor for the glory He promises we will one
glorious day experience, but it also a reminder of how He comes into the world
and into lives.
So often, my
friends, we forget the glory of the One who created us, called us, and promises
to be glorified in us. We fall prey to
the quick bursts of videos or the pithy statements that come across our
screens. We envy those who seem to have
more things or respect or whatever than us.
We define ourselves by nationality or political party affiliation or by
our profession. But this night, this
Silent Night and by this poem, you and I are reminded of the truth that God
lives and is enthroned in our hearts and that we are called to be heralds of
that truth. We are reminded that each
and every human being we encounter is like us, loved by God like us, hurts like
us, laughs like us, and dies like us. In
the end, He will return, my friends, to exercise the authority that has been
given to Him for His faithfulness, to right the wrongs and re-create a world
that rejected Him. But for now, from the
humble beginnings, and through ordinary human beings like us, God longs to draw
all in the world to Him, to His saving embrace.
Such has been His pattern since the beginning of the world. Such is why we celebrate this night!
In His Peace,
Brian†
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