On our anxieties and our tragedies and God's redemptive promise . . .

      I know I had threatened not to hold this service in January of last year.  It seemed a service that was needed for a few years but had run its course, in terms of participation by Adventers and those in the community around us.  That was, of course, before the Covenant shooting happened, Hamas’s attacks of October 7, and Israel’s response to those attacks.  Those who were here back in late March/early April might remember that we used this service to pray for the victims of the shooting and their families, to pray for the Covenant community, our neighborhood, and the family of the shooter.  If my follow up conversations with those who attended are any sign, not only was it needed, but it was very well received.  Many Christians in our area think it a sin to complain to God, and a few were worried that laments were unworthy of people who have great faith.  If nothing else, we had a chance to teach some in other churches that God encourages to come to Him with our pains, our hurts, our fears, our doubts, our angers and frustrations, and even our hopelessness.  In light of all that, we decided to observe this feast, the Feast of the Holy Innocents, again this year.

     For many of us outside the liturgical traditions, such an observance this week seems out of place.  We just celebrated the Feast of the Nativity on Sunday, a few of us went to church on Christmas Day to give thanks to God for the birth of Jesus, and it seems to me that many in the wider Church are realizing that Christmas is a short season, and not just a day.  I confess I love it when people confess they have “never heard of such a thing,” and I get to remind them that of course they have, and then I see the light bulb start t brighten as the realize the carol, Twelve Days of Christmas, has been teaching them that all their lives!  But I do understand the seeming whiplash.  Those of us who grew up in non-liturgical churches are unaware of the rhythm of the Church and how that rhythm reinforces much of the teaching about the Incarnation and our Lord’s purposes of Holy Week and Easter.  FWIW, this is NOT the first martyrdom we remember in the Church this week.  The Feast of St. Stephen, one of the first deacons in the Church and the first martyr, is celebrated on December 26.  Imagine attending a church named for Stephen and celebrating his feast day the day after Christmas!  But, as I said, all of this is to remind us that Jesus came into the world of darkness and would be rejected by those whom He came to save.  Though the Gospel ends on an amazing note of power and hope and promise, we are constantly reminded of the sin and death and evil that permeates the world.

     Such an observation and realization should not be shocking t God’s people.  The prophet Jeremiah had the wonderful God-appointed task of declaring the Exile to God’s people.  Prophets, as most Adventers have heard now for nine years, were supposed to be honored in Israel’s culture.  God was a speaking God, and He chose to speak through individuals such as Jeremiah.  The prophet was the only real check on the king.  If a king determined to do something, and the prophet said “Thus says the Lord, Don’t,” the king was supposed to listen.  Unfortunately, neither Israel nor her kings listened to the prophets very much.  Worse, they refused to be guided by God’s torah and stone those self-declared prophets whose prophesies did not come true.  For their part, all Israel recognize that Jeremiah was God’s prophet.  They just refused to listen to him, really to God.  In fact, the king tossed Jeremiah in a cistern to imprison and silence God.

     Our reading tonight begins with the recognizable formula.  Jeremiah is declaring that these words are the words of Yahweh.  “A voice is heard in Ramah.”  Where is Ramah?  Literally, the word could just suggest a height.  But as so often the case, poetry allows for a number of interpretations.  Ramah was the place where the first prophet, Samuel, was buried and where Rachel, the beloved favorite wife of Jacob, was buried.  The Lord is calling to memory through Jeremiah’s prophesy a great deal of history and imagery.  Those of us who do not pay close attention to the OT might not remember Rachel’s struggle with infertility.  Her sister Leah kept having children for Jacob, but she was unable in the beginning of their marriage.  Part of what we remember tonight is the grief and frustration and anger of the death of the oppressed or innocent.  Imagine what it was like for Rachel to lose Joseph when the brothers reported they found his coat torn and bloodied.  Some among us have no need to imagine it.  A few among us have lost children or even grandchildren to untimely or unexpected deaths.  That feeling of rage and impotence and who knows what else was experienced by them just like Rachel.  And God is using that image to prophesy how all Israel will feel about their upcoming Exile.

     That prophesy of Exile allows for yet another interpretation of Ramah.  Guess where the people of Israel were sorted and assigned as they were dispersed throughout the kingdom of Babylon?  That’s right, Ramah.  As Jeremiah will remind us in just 10 chapters or so, families and clans were divided in Ramah and dispersed throughout the empire as a way to protect the empire against future uprisings and revolts.  Imagine the grief and shame.

     Jeremiah goes on to describe the lamentation of Rachel.  Indeed, he instructs us that she cannot be comforted because her children are no more.  This wonderful poetry reminds us of the grief and rage and frustration we all have toward unjust suffering and death.  In fact, the Hebrew itself, when pronounced correctly, is not unlike the sound of sobbing we make when we are inconsolable.  Imagine the emotions at work and the sobbing in Israel when the words of Jeremiah proved true.  God swore His Covenant with Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob.  God promised that their descendants would be numerous and a blessing to the world.  What made Israel special was that God chose them to be His People.  They had been instructed, through the torah, what it meant to live in relationship with a holy God.  They had been instructed that, when they went astray, He would send a prophet to speak correction and warning with His voice.  They had been instructed that signs would be given them by Him when they were straying from the Covenant.  Most of all, He promised them that if they failed to repent in spite of all these warning, He would cause the Land He gave them to reject them, to spit them out.  Jeremiah had the unenviable task of telling his brothers and sisters that God’s patience had been exhausted.  His people were going to be carried off into oppression.  And God’s people responded by ignoring Jeremiah’s warnings and tossing him into a cistern in Jerusalem.  We can all imagine that bitter shame as it came true.

     In many ways, some of our stories are just as tragic.  All of us wrestle with disease and death.  Heck, as a nation we are into our third year of pandemic living.  We have experienced deaths in our community and in our families.  Worse, many of us are uncomfortable when challenged by others in our lives as to why God allowed the pandemic or death, if He is so powerful.  All of us live with more anxiety about war, right?  A couple years ago, none of us probably gave the “rumors of war” a second thought, unless family was serving in the military.  But now . . . how many of us are giving thoughts to nuclear war for the first time since we hid under our desks in school?  How many of us are genuinely worried about WW3?  A wrong move by Putin or Iran could turn regional conflicts into worldwide conflagration.  And let’s not forget about our favorite little dictator in North Korea, who seemingly shakes his fist and throws a tantrum whenever he thinks the world is not properly fearing his might and power.  Who among us can stop such escalations?  How can we really protect ourselves against such oppression?

     Speaking of oppression, how many of us, and our loved ones, have been battered by economic forces beyond our control this year?  Inflation has gone crazy.  Oil has spiked, yet again, thanks to these wars.  As badly as we have been hit, and let’s be honest, most of us are economically privileged, the real economic oppression has been felt by those least able to deal with it in the world around us.  Some of those whom we serve through Body & Soul work three and four part-time jobs trying to make ends meet, and they cannot.

     Locally, of course, we have all experienced more oppression.  I have already reminded us of the Covenant shooting that took place late last March.  Many of us did not give mass shootings and school shootings much thought until they happened here.  But at least we have our politicians working to solve all these problems, right?

     And what of those untimely deaths?  As a community, we have all grieved the loss of MC and Jim, and many of us mourned with Gregg and Lynn as they buried a grandson, a grandson some of us fed or taught as a child in this parish.  How many of us complained they did not know what to say to them or ourselves over those tragedies?

     Lastly, but maybe more important to us, what of those individual oppressions, traumas, and tragedies we have experienced but I have not named?  Ladies among us have suffered miscarriages.  Many among us have lived through cracking and breaking relationships.  Many among us have had dreams replaced by anxieties through personal traumas.  Other diseases besides COVID have plagued us.  Cancer has not taken a break.  Neither has shingles.  I won’t bother to ask who is recovering from injuries, but you know who you are.  Some of us are dealing with heart problems, vision problems, and attacks by our immune systems.  What of all those?  Where is God in the midst of those?

     Thankfully, and mercifully, God’s words through Jeremiah ends with hope.  Jeremiah promises them that one day they will come back from the land of their enemy.  One day, Israel will be restored.  Though these various oppressions will happen, God will not forget the promise He made to their fathers and mothers.  One glorious day He will restore.

     That same promise of hope and freedom from oppression is proclaimed to us, as well.  Even as we hurl our complaints and laments at God in this liturgy, you and I should also hear that still small voice reminding us of His promise of redemption and restoration, that we will one day dwell with Him and He with us.  Even as we struggle with worldwide, national, local, and personal oppression, we are reminded by His covenant with us that nothing will separate us from Him or His purposes, that nothing we suffer is beyond His power to redeem.  Though this event, the deaths of the toddlers at the command of an enraged, unfaithful king of God’s people did not take place for some two years after the birth we celebrated Sunday night, we celebrate it in the season of the Incarnation to remind us both of the evil that we face and God’s Will to redeem that evil in the lives of those who proclaim Him Lord.  We are reminded in this season of God’s incredible love for each one of us.  We are reminded in this season that God become fully human, that we might see and know Him clearly in the flesh, that we might see lived out a pattern of holy living in our midst, and that we might begin to see our need for a Savior.  We are intentionally reminded in this season that even though we ignore, reject, betray, and mock Him, still He loves us enough that He wills Himself to hang on that Cross for our sakes.  The Incarnation, without that reminder of Easter and the path that led to His death, is meaningless.  But because God demonstrates His power over suffering and death in Christ Jesus, you and I know that no oppression, no suffering, can separate us from God’s power, love, and Will to redeem.  Such is His promise to us.

     So, my friends, my brothers and sisters in Christ, hurl your complaints at Him.  Sob your lamentations in His ears.  If you are so inclined, lay the complaints and anxieties of those whom you love at His feet.  But also remember His promise to you that He made at your baptism and confirmed in the life and death and resurrection in our Lord Christ as you are anointed for healing or eat of His flesh and drink of His blood.  Know that your cries do come to Him.  Know that it is His Will that His Light shines in the shadows that oppress you.  Know that it is His Will and promise that one glorious Day in the future, all will be restored.  All our hurts, our pains, our bruises, and even our deaths will be wiped away.  I cannot imagine how such promises can be fulfilled to make any of us not shed any tears for our sufferings, but such is His unending promise to each one of us gathered here tonight.

     Or, to put it more simply, none of us can assuage our sufferings and complaints.  None of us can assuage the sufferings and complaints of those around us.  Thankfully and mercifully, though, we know the One who can, Lord Jesus Christ!  Him we serve and Him we proclaim, trusting in His promise and His redemptive power!

 

In His Peace and Power!

Brian†

From Speaking to Enfleshment and Our Joyful Hope!

 

     We have reached the end of the big rush of the season.  That, at least in part, explains why we are an intimate group this Christmas morning.  It’s probably just as well.  The sermon idea that I had for this morning was a bit, I thought, . . . esoteric.  But now that I see our small group, maybe it really was from God.  By that, I mean, I can promise you all that none of you have thought of the Gospel of John in this way, as it is something that popped into my head over the last week as I was doing Greek with Joshua and Brian.  But each of you has turned out for your third service of Thanksgiving in the last twenty-four hours.  You have braved Nashville traffic in the rain, dodged the flock of turkeys who keep crossing Lakemont, and girded yourselves for a normal “boring” Christmas message, right?  Be careful about patting yourself on the back too hard.  Nathan can tell you shoulder surgery rehab is neither fun nor pleasant!  But this odd sermon that was coursing through my head since last Wednesday is likely only to land with those who both take their faith seriously and need a bit of reassurance, given the testimony of the world out there.

     Now that I have your attentions, I’ll explain.  I am certain all of you noticed that I read the Prologue of John in lieu of the Nativity story of Luke.  Part of that decision arose from the fact that I focused on Luke last night at both Nativity services, focusing on imagination at the early service and on the focus on “you” at the late service.  Both of those followed a discussion about transformations in the Advent 4 services.  Each of you heard two of those four sermons and, I trust, still remember them.  Good.  Unlike the other synoptic Gospels, John has a different perspective.  In particular, as we read the Prologue last night after the late Eucharist and again this morning, John is focused on the idea that Jesus, the Word of God, is the beginning of the re-creation promised by God.  In some ways, we might say that John’s prologue serves as a Genesis of the New Testament.  With me so far?  Good.

     There is a progression about God that is unfolded during the Advent season, and we reminded ourselves of it yesterday and this morning.  The progression, as John reminds us this morning, begins with logos.  Logos is a Greek word that is full of all kinds of understanding, pun intended, and almost as much nuance.  The quick definition would be something along the lines of divine reason or ordering of chaos or understanding.  There are a number of Christian theologians who argue that the imago dei, the image of God, that is in us is the logos.  Our ability to think and understand and solve is that part of God that separates us from the animals of the world, or, for those of us feeling creative this morning, the spark that jumps from God to Adam in Michelangelo’s ceiling on the Sistine Chapel.

     To speak particularly anthropomorphically this morning, logos is the thinking or idea in God’s mind.  With me so far?  Good.

     I say we are speaking particularly anthropomorphically because we understand what is revealed through our own processes.  Logos is kind of like an idea or understanding that you and I have in our heads.  But something changes when that idea or understanding is expressed.  Generally, for us, we begin to make or describe or to solve something.  There seems to be a bit of change in the nature of things, at least so far as the authors of Scripture are concerned, between what is in what’s God’s head and what happens in the cosmos around Him.

     Think back to yesterday morning and the angel’s emphasis to Mary that what God has spoken cannot NOT happen.  Our translation rendered it poorly as “nothing is impossible with God.”  As Brian and Joshua will tell you, that translation captures the basic meaning of what is behind the grammar, but there is still more to meaning we lose.  Specifically, we lose the emphasis of the double negative in the Greek and on the reminder about what God has spoken must occur.  Luke could have chosen all kinds of way to express “nothing is impossible for God,” but, and we assume inspired by the Holy Spirit, Luke chose HIs words to reflect something being revealed by God.

     Specifically, think of the role of the prophet among God’s people.  The prophet was elected to instruct the king when the king went astray because the king’s primary responsibility as a steward of God was to lead the people of God into right relationship with Him.  As a consequence, there were usually prophets among the people of Israel for most of the Old Testament.  The prophet spoke the logos of God hoping for a return to God’s instructions.  More often than not, though, the people and kings ignored the voice of the prophet, that which was spoken.  Some might say that Israel did not fully understand how dependent they were on God’s voice in their midst until it disappeared in the time between Malachi and John the Baptizer.

     For our part, such an understanding source of hope in the promises of God.  If God has spoken something through the prophets or Scripture or even in His communications with us, then we know it will happen, or, as Gabriel told Mary, it cannot NOT happen.  To the extent that things do not happen, we understand the fault is with us.  Either we have misunderstood or misapplied what God has spoken.  Because He has spoken and because what He has spoken cannot NOT happen, we know the problem lies with us and not Him.  We are not attended to Him correctly.  Just to be clear, we are no worse than those who claimed to preach or teach or instruct in His voice throughout history.  One of the ways that God’s people were to judge prophets was by whether what the prophet said happened.  If it did, then the people knew the prophet was of God.  If not, the false prophet was to be stoned.  Imagine how carefully we should claim to be prophets of God if the consequence of our misunderstanding, assuming good intentions, was a stoning!  Yet how many “false prophets” are among us in the Church today!

     For his part, John the Apostle captures this understanding well.  John instructs us about the Logos.  Specifically, John instructs us about the Word of God that dwells with the Father in the beginning, the Word who is with God and is God.  He even instructs us about the silence and our need for God’s voice in our life as we live and work in the darkness.  He reminds us that there was another John who proclaimed that the Word, the Logos of verse 1, outranked him because He was before Him.  Yes, John’s Prologue helps us understand the Trinity better, not completely, but there is another teaching going on.  John the Baptizer comes after 270 years of God’s silence to proclaim that the Logos was coming into the world, the Logos that was with God and is God in the beginning!

     Now for the fun part for us.  Again, speaking anthropomorphically about God, if there is a double negative emphasis on the fact that what God has spoken cannot NOT happen, what do we make of what we celebrated last night and this morning and for the next twelve days?  John tells us in verse 14.  This Logos that was with God and is God, which has been spoken through the prophets until this point in salvation history, became flesh and lived among us.  Better still, in this Word made flesh, we are able to see the glory of Him whose glory before this moment in salvation history would blind and even destroy us were we to see Him in His glory unmediated.

     I see some pondering faces.  Now you know why I said this was not for those who do not steep themselves in their attunement to God in worship and study and prayer.  There is a progression in God’s revelation that ought to reassure us or comfort us or be a source of hope that cannot be quashed.  If what God has spoken cannot NOT happen, how much more meaning is attached to His enfleshment and dwelling among us?  Put in simple English, rather than Johannine language or Greek, as much emphasis as the angel places on the “cannot NOT happen” about God’s spoken words, how much more emphasis must there be upon His enfleshed Word?  

     We know the answer, of course.  This Babe whose birth we celebrated last night and this morning comes to restore the intimacy we lost in the Garden and through our sins.  This Light that has entered the darkness of the world will be scorned, rejected, tortured, and eventually killed.  But even then, when it looks like the world has won, the Father acts and raises His Son from the dead and speaks, reminding each one of us who proclaim His Son the Lord of our lives will share in HIs Resurrection. And as much assurance as we find in God’s spoken words through the prophets, how much more so are we reassured by His Incarnation, Resurrection, and Ascension!

     My friends, we are sent back out into a crazy dark world.  Our politicians rule for their own aggrandizement and not those whom they serve or the One who grants them authority.  Nature itself seems chaotic with floods and tornados and volcanos and earthquakes far too common.  And, lest we forget, the microbes of nature are working a triple whammy on us even as we gather a God’s people remembering the awe and mystery of the Incarnation this morning.  Economically speaking, there is a shift happening before our eyes, a shift whose outcome none of us can accurately forecast.  For two years we have gathered as God’s people when wars, rather than rumors of war, have reared their heads.  Some of us who understand human nature and the willingness of human beings to treat other human beings as less than, recognize both the tragedies unfolding in real time before our eyes and the dangerous possibilities of escalation.  And I have not yet even drawn your attention to the discord and suffering on our individual lives.  How many of us face challenges of family dynamics during this joyful season, dynamics that were stoked by events of Thanksgiving?  How many of us are pouring the deaths of loved ones?  How many of us are struggling with our own aches and pains and sufferings or those of loved ones in our lives?  The list of darkness goes on and on.  And what of the unaddressed evils in the world.  Misogyny was not fixed by #metoo; racism was not cured by Black Lives Matter.  Oh, and lest we forget, we get the wonderful privilege and experience of living through another presidential election next year, and all the positive, nation-building advertisements that will stream on our devices or be heard on radio or seen on television as commercials.

     Yes, the darkness is real.  The world is oppressive.  But because God’s Logos has become enfleshed and lived among us, you and I have a source of hope that reminds us, encourages us, exhorts us, that God will not fail us!  The rest of the world might reject our work, might mock us for our faith, but we know both God’s purpose and power in this event we call the Incarnation.  And because we know how He promises this story will end, we know we can work in any darkness, minister in the midst of any oppression, confident that, if God has called us to such work, we, and He, cannot fail.  Even if such work takes our life and we appear defeated to the world around us, we know One glorious day He will return and finish what He began in earnest with the birth of our Savior Jesus Christ.  Best of all, we who trusted, who proclaimed Him Lord, worked to accomplish His will in the world around us, and who repented when we failed, have been proclaimed heirs by His Apostle and promised a share in the Resurrection begun in His Son Jesus Christ our Lord.  And armed with that understanding and comfort, we are sent back out into the world with those candles we lit last night, trust that God will use our flickering flames to draw others in our lives to His saving embrace.  God has spoken; God has enfleshed Himself and dwelt among us.  He cannot and will not fail!

 

In His Peace,

Brian†