On the Exercise of our Gifts and the Glorious Freedom of our Callings . . .

      My intention before this week was to continue our discussion about the gifts given us by the Holy Spirit and our call to exercise them to draw others into a right relationship with God through Christ.  As such, had you asked me last week, I would have said I would be preaching on our 1^st Corinthians reading and spending a bit of time on hesed, the Hebrew word which is translated into agape in Greek and love in English.  Paul is reminding us that we are called to be committed to exercising our gifts for the purpose of bringing people into a right relationship with God.  We probably would have reflected on God’s commitment to Israel, despite Israel’s determination to dive Him to break the covenant He has created with them, much in the way you and I do the same when we sin against Him despite our own baptismal covenant.

     But, conversations being what they were, it is clear that there is a bit of misunderstanding regarding the exercise of our gifts.  Specifically, I have had too many conversations where Adventers are evaluating the exercise, or potential exercise, of their gifts on their own or the secular world’s standards, rather than God’s.  So, today, I hope to disabuse you of that shared misunderstanding and spend a few moments reminding you of the freedom we have to exercise those gifts.  So, let’s turn to Luke . . .

     Just to remind you where we are in the narrative, Jesus has returned to Nazareth after some serious miraculous healings and exorcisms in Capernaum.  He has been given the scroll from Isaiah, opened it to the passage that says God has called the prophet to open the eyes of the blind, to proclaim release to the prisoners, to announcer the year of Jubilee, and all those wonderful callings with which most of us are familiar.  Jesus, in a stunning proclamation to His hometown synagogue, informs them that the teaching has been fulfilled in their hearing.

     To be sure, it is an arrogant statement, were it not true.  Imagine, if you will, how well that sentence would be received by those who knew you growing up, were you to go back home, worship in the church of your youth with the congregation that knew you when.  How do you think they would respond?  It is for that reason, by the way, that wise bishops in our church strongly advise clergy not to explore calls in their sending parishes.  You can well imagine.  What if I tried to go home and be the priest at the local church?  Y’all only know part of my total depravity.  They know a lot more.  What would be the impact on my teaching?  My admonishments?  My authority?  That’s right, lot’s of laughter.  Or maybe some grumbling.

     Right away, Luke notes the response to His teaching.  All spoke well of Him and were amazed at the gracious words that he spoke.  They are a bit too impressed.  They began to wonder how the hometown boy became this way.  I mean. . . He is Joseph’s son, after all.  He was trained in carpentry, not in rabbinic studies.  It’s a head-scratcher, to be sure.

     Jesus, for His part, understands the hearts of those questioning.  Who does He think He is to think God called Him to do these things?  Why should I listen to Him, He is just Joseph’s boy?  It’s not like He is one of the great teachers or even a student of the great teachers.  So Jesus quotes a proverb about healing Himself and then speaks to the underlying desire of all of them.  They want Him to do the same things in Nazareth that He is reported to have done at Capernaum.

     Understand the problem here.  Jesus grew up in a big village in an out of the way region of the least desired province in the empire.  I often teach Robert because he is so quick to pick on his own home state, but think of a small town in Tennessee.  It probably sits at the crossroads of a couple rural roads.  It has a post office.  Maybe a gas station.  One of those flashing lights at the place where the two rural roads cross.  It might have a handimart for urgent groceries, but it is really far too small for one of the big grocery chains.  They have to go to civilization to do real shopping.  If you grew up in such a place, you understand this mindset on a fundamental level.  Those of us in big cities look on such places as beneath us.  They lack the accoutrements of life that we think we need to survive.  But they are real communities.  People know one another really well.  Children can romp through the woods or field or streams with nary a care.  Everybody looks after everybody.  And everybody knows one another’s business.

     Capernaum, by contrast, would be that next size up.  It sits at the mouth of the Jordan on the Sea of Galilee.  Fishing is a big industry there.  Because of its location, a number of traders are often passing through on their way to other places.  It has a grocery store.  It has a mechanic.  It has a school.  It has three or four stoplights.  It even has . . . gasp, Gentiles living there.  Because of the ability to make money, outside business owners set up shop.  They may run their businesses or hire others to run it for them.  It’s not Nashville, but it’s a couple steps up from the crossroad village.

     Those who know Jesus expect Him to do more for His hometown than He did in the big city of Capernaum.  He is one of them, after all, and He owes them more.  Those of you who read that now famous book, Hillbilly Elegy, understand the attitude better.  But despite expecting more, they do not trust Jesus to be who others think He may be.  Capernaum is beginning to think He is at least a prophet, like John the Baptizer, as He does incredible work.  The more faithful in Capernaum might even wonder if He is the Anointed One of God, the Messiah, because of some of those miracles.  But those in Nazareth are blinded by the fact that Jesus is one of them.  They know Him.  They watched Him grow up.  He may speak well.  He may be the most gracious fella they know.  But He is only Joseph’s son.  He’s not really THAT important.

     So, Jesus gives them a spiritual bloody nose.  They are like ancient Israel in that they expected God’s grace.  Maybe the better word is that ancient Israel demanded God’s grace or felt they were owed God’s grace.  Israel knew that Yahweh had sworn the covenant with their ancestors.  They lived in a world that believed what happened on earth was mirrored in the heavens and vice versa.  Most of the rest of the ANE was certain that temples existed to help strengthen their god, and that their gods needed the temple to survive in order to get power and be able to fight the other gods in the heavens.  Over time, Israel forgot the terms of the covenant.  God had given their ancestors warning signs for when God was displeased.  He would try and get their attention through droughts, pestilences, famines, and war.  If Israel failed to see or understand the warning signs, He promised the Land would disgorge them.  Good, I see the nods.  Understand, everyone in this synagogue with Jesus is on this side of the Exile.  Their ancestors were kicked off the Land for their transgressions.  We might say this is a bit of family history that stings.

     Jesus goes to two specific examples in history.  Elijah, the great prophet of Israel who battled the priests of Ba’al, the great prophet who became the second person in their history not to die by being carried up in the chariots of fire, the great prophet whom some think Jesus might be, that prophet was sent not to Israel during a drought, but to Sidon, a Gentile land.  A drought had come over the Land for 3 years and 6 months; yet, Israel forgets the significance.  The prophet goes to Sidon, as God directs, and ends up staying with a widow and her son.  If you have ever heard the story of the widow whose jars of flour and water never run out, this is that story.  If you have ever heard the story of Elijah laying on the son of the widow and interceding with God to raise the widow’s son to life, this is that story.  Those is Jesus’ audience know it well.  God instructs His prophet to go stay with a Gentile widow.  And God cares for her as He does any daughter of Israel, even raising her son from the dead, even as Israel suffers from the drought He has caused to get their attention.

     The second story should be well know to each of you as well.  Israel has been getting beat in battles by their enemies—another, more serious, sign from God that they are not keeping the covenant.  This time, Syria is beating them up on the battlefield.  Naaman is a famous general from Syria.  Think of our generals Schwarzkopf or McCarthur.  He fights to win.  And he has been punishing Israel on the battlefield.

     The story is great to read, and I commend it to each one of you.  I’ll also cheat and remind you that the real heroes of the story are the little Israelite girl and the nameless attendant of Naaman.  Naaman has a big problem.  He’s a leper.  The disease makes him an outcast in society, even in cultures outside of Israel.  Luckily for him, he has captured a little Israelite girl and brought her home as a spoil of war, a slave for him and his wife.  That little Israelite girl is able to put all her suffering behind her.  Her family has likely been killed.  Now she is a slave of Gentile dogs.  If any girl ever had reason to think God had abandoned her, it is that little girl.  Yet, she tells Naaman and his wife that the prophet Elisha, Elijah’s successor, could heal him by God’s power.

     Over time, the little girls words sink in.  Naaman goes to his king for a letter of introduction.  The Syrian king pens a letter “asking” the king to see that Naaman is cured of his leprosy.  For his part, the king of Israel is convinced his counterpart just wants another excuse to beat him on the battlefield.  He complains that there is nothing he can do to heal Naaman.  At that point, a letter arrives from the prophet instructing the king to send Naaman to him.

     Naaman arrives as instructed.  Elisha, for his part, does not even bother coming out of his house.  He tells the general to go wash in the Jordan seven times to be cured.  Naaman is incensed.  Why should he bathe in a filthy river in Israel?  Why won’t this prophet even both to come out and speak to him?  Doesn’t the prophet know who he is?

     After a lot of ranting and raving, one of the attendants gets through to Naaman.  He reminds Naaman of all the wealth he brought to purchase the healing from the God of Israel and of the fact that Naaman would move mount to be healed.  Eventually, Naaman relents from his anger and pride, bathes in the river, and is miraculously cured of his leprosy.  Jesus tells this story reminding them that God did not work with the lepers in Israel!

     What should the response of those in Nazareth have been?  Jesus is using two stories, very well known to them, to point out examples of hardness of heart and how God is willing to work with anyone who will turn to Him in faith.  Those with whom Jesus grew up should see themselves as Israel and Capernaum as the Gentile lands.  Yet they miss the point.  In fact, they become enraged at His gracious words.  They carry Him up to the brow of the hill, Luke writes, intending to hurl Him off the cliff.  We miss the significance of this action, other than the threat of trying to kill Jesus.  The people of Nazareth are wanting to treat their own son as a false prophet.  So blind are they to what Isaiah just instructed them, so deaf are they to Jesus’ gracious words, they miss the healing that God offers.  Luke finishes the story telling us that Jesus passed through their midst and went on their way.  It is a horrible judgment.  Salvation was in their midst, and they rejected Him!

     Why my focus on this story?  Since Christmas, I have had a number of conversations with Adventers regarding the exercise of their gifts.  If you have missed a lot of church recently due to the pandemic and Comcast, we have been talking a great deal about how our baptism not only cleanses us from our sins, but that it ensures us that the Holy Spirit will give us whatever we need to glorify God in our lives.  The problem, of course, our hardness of heart or blindness of eyes or deafness of ears, is that we too often judge the exercise of those gifts of the Holy Spirit according to the world’s wisdom.  Father, I have tried to share my faith when people asked, but it made no difference.  Father, I have invited people to church, but they never come.  Father, we feed hungry people week in and week out, but they are always hungry.  Father, I tell people we aren’t like that idiot in Mt. Juliet or those Christians who hate immigrants or think science is a tool of the Devil, but it makes no difference.  Too many Adventers use the excuse that they think they are faithfully exercising their gifts as God calls them, but the results of their exercise of those gifts are not what they think they should be.

     It is, of course, understandable.  We invite people to church, assuming success is that they will come.  We feed hungry people, assuming success is that they will get through their hard times quickly and be able to take care of themselves.  Whenever we do anything, we judge it by the world’s standard of productivity.  And, yet, the Gospel news is that we are called only to the faithful obedience of God’s calls on our lives and faithful exercise of those gifts He has given us.  That’s it!  That’s all we do; that’s all God asks of us.  He takes care of the results.  He is the One playing the “long game” of salvation in peoples’ lives.  It may take twenty testimonies before someone understands that God, may in fact, love them.  Was the work of the first nineteen people worthless?  Unproductive?  More importantly, do we think God thinks our work is unproductive or worthless?  Not if He called us to it!  Even more amazing, we can try our best, screw everything up, and know that God can redeem our worst mistakes!  How do we know all this?

     Look at our story today.  Who is the One responsible for doing God’s will in the pericope?  That’s right, Jesus.  Would any of us here describe Jesus’ work as successful?  I hear the snorting laughter.  By worldly standards, you snorters are correct.  Jesus’ audience ignores His gracious words and instructive teaching.  Their hearts are so hard they determine to treat Him as a false prophet and kill Him.  Sound familiar?  Yet, in the end, how would we describe Jesus’ ministry on earth?  It is not enough to say that it is the most successful ministry in all salvation history, but those present at His Crucifixion and death assume it to be a horrible failure.  Thankfully, and mercifully, their opinions do not matter.  Only God’s does.  To demonstrate God’s pleasure at His work, to reinforce His love and power and grace for hardhearted human beings like us, God raised Him on the Third Day and promised each and every one of us who believe in Him, that we will share in that glorious eternal life.  If God can redeem faithful obedience even from death, what can He do with our misspoken words?  Our well-meaning but failed applications of our gifts and talents?  Of our too-numerous-to-count failures?  Knowing that, and trusting Him, brothers and sisters, you and I are freed from the world’s judgments on the faithful exercise of our gifts and reminded that our Father in heaven will ensure that nothing He purposes, nothing to which we are called in His Name, will ever be a waste or failure.

 

In Christ’s Peace,

Brian†

More on the Prologue . . . .

      Our reading this week will sound familiar to most of us.  It will be very familiar to those of us who have attended multiple services during this twelve day season we call Christmas.  I believe it has come up three times, which gives us an idea of its importance to our spiritual predecessors.  The reading is known as the prologue to the Gospel of John.  John’s purpose in writing the book is to share those things that Jesus did that will convince the reader or hearer to believe that He is the Messiah, the Son of God, and that through believing the reader or hearer might have life in His name.

     I know, it’s weird to proclaim John an evangelist.  We think of others as evangelists, but many of us think of John as a poet and theologian.  His writing style soars, and He explicitly teaches understandings that the other Gospel writers seem a bit more covert in discussing.  Case in point: the Prologue.  We all know it pretty well.  Some of us likely memorized it for VBS or Sunday School or Nativity plays.  We say it every year at the conclusion of the Nativity of Christ celebration as we light individual candles from the Christ candle and dim the lights.  Heck, that aspect of our liturgy was the focus of my sermon Friday night, where I reminded us that we go out into the world with that flickering light that cannot be quenched, though the darkness and the world will do its best to snuff it out.  For all its flowery language, for all its prose and theologizing, the Prologue serves as both the beginning of the re-creation of the world by God and as the Nativity story for John.

     What do I mean?  In the beginning . . . We see those words first in the book of Genesis, where God broods over the waters, creates the world and all that is in it, and makes humankind in their [our] image.  John uses them here to tell us that something new is beginning, something new and of God.  To be sure, it is unexpected and it is challenging to understand.  The Word was with God and the Word was God.  John is clearly articulating an understanding of the Trinity in an unexpected way.  Jesus was with God in the beginning and was God.

     Much more could be written, and no doubt some of us wish John had, but he presses on teaching us about that last creation, about how the world came into being through Him, about how He was the Light of the world.  There is tons to unpack in those verses, and my focus is elsewhere, but John clearly wants you and I to understand that the world came into being through Jesus, the Messiah and Son of God.  That same Jesus is the Light of this world.

     The Gospel writer goes on to remind us that John the Baptist came into the world to testify to the work and person of Jesus.  John the Baptist gave his testimony, but the world rejected it.  In fact, for those of us who know the story, Herod had John the Baptist put to death for teaching the wisdom of God.  So John the Gospel writer reminds us that the world rejected its Creator, that the world would rather choose darkness than live in the Light.

     It is beautiful writing, is it not?  Certainly, it is glorious to hear and challenging to grasp fully.  But then we get to my focus for the day, this second Sunday after the Feast of Christmas.  I have remarked in a couple services how I am struck by the humility of the tale.  I know, thanks to some conversations in the parish hall or in the office, that the humility of God was a great place to be this season.  We have talked about how many of those in the world around us strive for their fifteen minutes of fame.  How many people now are famous simply because they did a stunt that went viral on social media?  Heck, how many people claim and like to believe they are internet influencers?  How many people in the world act outrageously or over the top, thinking there is no such thing as bad publicity?  How many people in the world around us find their value or self-worth in the number of friends or number of followers that they have?  And how many of those, who perceive themselves as important, use that power to humiliate others?  Bully others?  Shame others?

     Yet another of God’s vaccinations against our vain chasings after reputation and influence are hidden in this Prologue of John.  Whatever we know about the Incarnation, we know thanks to Luke and Matthew.  Mark is mostly concerned with the Crucifixion and Resurrection of Jesus and begins his Gospel with the appearance of John the Baptist making paths straight.  But Luke and Matthew are where we go to learn about the star, the manger and swaddling clothes, the angel choir, and all those other details we know.  Even John’s nativity telling is rather lacking in detail.  And the Word became flesh and lived among us, and we have seen His glory, the glory as of a father’s only son, full of grace and truth.

     That’s it!  That’s John’s nativity scene.  That’s is John’s teaching that God has come down and lived among us.  This Word that was with God and is God has become flesh and lived among us.  There’s no visit by the magi.  There’s no proclamation by the angelic choir.  John writes simply that God became flesh and lived among us.  John would agree that the Incarnation of Jesus is one of the most stupendous events in cosmic history, it rivals even the initial creation where Jesus and the Father and the Holy Spirit brooded over the waters, and it gets a sing verse in the Prologue!  Can you imagine?  We talk on Christmas Eve sometimes how the shepherds are valued and blessed by God.  I mean. . .  they get to hear the angelic choir singing God’s praises.  Most of us think Jesus’ birth deserves an angelic choir that could be heard by all flesh in the world; God just letting the shepherds hear the announcement is humility enough.  But John takes it to another level.  God became flesh and lived among us.

     If ever there was a vaccination against pride and self-aggrandizement?  If ever there was a vaccination against self-loathing and not esteeming oneself, this is it!  From John’s perspective, the Incarnation of Christ should be sufficient wonder.  Why would God do salvation history this way?

     Of course, the humility sets the stage for the ultimate choice of humanity which John announces in the preceding verse.  I always find it unique that John answers the why of the Incarnation before he announces the Incarnation.  Authorial intent sometimes amazes me, and it certainly does with Scripture.  We Episcopalians/Anglicans understand that this Prologue of John was God-breathed.  That means to us that God inspired the writing, the editing, and the collecting of this passage we call the Prologue of John.  We might acknowledge the humility of the Nativity as appropriate to God’s character.  Throughout the Scriptures, God reveals Himself always willing to stoop to our level to reach us, to make Himself known.  So when we read this one verse account of God’s enfleshment among us, we might not be too surprised.  Ah, but the why, the why is the source of wonder for poets, for songwriters, and even for folks like you and me.

     But to all who received Him, who believed in His name, He gave power to become children of God, who were born, not of blood or of the will of the flesh or of the will of man, but of God.  Before John tells us that God was enfleshed, John tells us the very reason that this Incarnation happened, why this event is so important in history!  What glorious purpose is behind that story of Jesus’ birth!  He came so that we, like the world, could begin to be re-created.  We get the freedom to chose God and to get the new heart and mind and will promised with that choice, or we can reject God and embrace the darkness and evil which surrounds us.  Is there a starker choice in history?  Given the stakes, the eternal stakes, I am certain there is not.

     And oh how I wish the references to God were capitalized.  I hope the Holy Spirit makes you hear it in your heart that way.  One of my gripes about modern Bibles and modern discussions with people in charge of our Prayer Book is the loss of capitalization of pronouns and other words that refer to God.  Those in charge claim it’s MLA or Chicago Style’s fault, as if those organizations hold some kind of power over us.  As you all know, we live in a world that is struggling with referent words.  We fill out college and job applications where we name our preferred pronouns.  We struggle with best how to acknowledge the struggles and identities of others, rightly so.  We want to respect their struggles and their self-identification.  For centuries we rightly reminded ourselves and others that God was above our understanding.  Folks would sometimes rightly remind us that God was Holy and wholly Other.  Yet, so much of God’s character is revealed in His humility.  That capital letter reminds us of His otherness.  A few moments ago, when I remarked about the humility of Matthew’s and Luke’s telling of the Nativity, you may have come up with better ways to proclaim that great news.  Yet God is so wholly Other that he went the route that He did.  He entered the world He created in ANE world equivalent of rural Alabama for us important people of Tennessee.  He entered the world as far away from the center of pomp and circumstance that one could get.  Heck, He was not even born in the Temple which was meant to be the place on earth for human beings to worship Him!

     All of this, every bit it, everything about which the Psalmist wrote, everything about which Moses wrote, everything that the prophets proclaimed pointed to this moment in history!  The single most important human’s birth happened in an out of the way region in an out of the way province of the world.  And more crazily to marketers and public relations people, He chose to let those with whom He lived and laughed and cried and died tell the story.  Crazily, from our perspective, He entrusted men and women just like us, men and women who struggle, who fight with families, who worry about the threats in the world, who sometimes get so wrapped up in a tree of salvation that we miss the forest of it significance, to become heralds of the Gospel.  And here we sit, reminding ourselves of that story, two thousand years later and nine thousand miles distant, all because of three whole verses.  Brothers and sisters, what more proof do you need that He is wholly Other, that His ways are not our ways?

     Were that the end of the story, you and I would rightfully stand or kneel in awe.  But we gather today, as is our custom four days during the year, to remind ourselves intentionally of the significance of our choice.  You see, brothers and sisters, the darkness still has not given up; evil still fights tooth and nail to keep human beings from recognizing their Creator, from recognizing their value, from understanding the depths of love which God bore for each and every one of us.  The darkness fights to convince us that the vanities of followers on social media is our true value, that our political affiliation is our pre-eminent identifier, that we cannot ever truly be loved.

     And against that diabolical lie on this day stands those three simple verses.  God came down from heaven and lived among us.  We have seen His glory.  More amazingly, He made this decision so that we could make ours.  Do we want Him to be our Father, too?  Make no mistake, the same darkness that fought Jesus will fight all of us who choose to ask God to be our Father and Christ to be our brother.  Pandemics rage to isolate and scare us; provisions are sometimes scarce, families are almost always dysfunctional even when they are not “fun,” disease and pain are always testifying against our choice—this list of darkness goes on and on and on.  But in choosing to be His daughter or Son, God rewards us with a promise.  From that moment until the ages of ages, we are always His.  Nothing, not even our deaths, can separate us from Him and from His promise to redeem all things in our lives.  All He asks of us, all He expects of us, is that we do our best to do the work that He has given us to do, trusting that He will provide whatever we need to glorify Him in our struggles and in our lives.  We call it cross-bearing, but as John so eloquently notes later in this Gospel, we know that such work is the path to eternal glory with our Father.

     And so, we will come to this rail and we will come to this Table.  We will ask God to heal us and make us whole, and we will ask, if it is His will that we continue to bear crosses, that He give us eyes to see and ears to hear how our suffering glorifies Him in our life.  We will, because His Son so instructed us, to ask for the benefits of His Death, Resurrection, and Ascension, trusting that we one day will see the wholly and Holy Other face to face.  In the end, as John so succinctly reminds us, that is the point of all God’s work, that we might know His love for us and choose Him over the darkness.

 

In Christ’s Peace,

Brian†