Use Your Words

Text: Jeremiah 1:1-10 January 28, 2006

Words matter. They are not just ways to label the world. They influence how we see the world. What categories we have for things. How we perceive things, how we perceive time. People—like advertisers or politicians—try to put words in our brains so that we will see the world and our place in it in a particular way. When we see things, we attach them to categories we already have words for. New ideas take a while to take hold because they either demand new words or new ways of using old words.

The words for things we think a lot about seem to take up a lot of space in our heads, and things that are not so important take up less space. There is less chatter there. But the reverse is true, too. If we spend a lot of time with the words of an idea, we begin to think a lot about it. Partly, that’s what education is. Partly that’s why TV is so powerful. And books. It makes a difference in your head depending on whether you read a lot of murder mysteries or The New York Times or Consumer Reports or the Bible.

It turns out the on the piano, in the key of C major all the notes are played on the white keys. C D E F G A B C. In the key of A minor, also, all the notes are played on the white keys. A B C D E F G A. Same notes. This is pretty “duh” if you know music, so please bear with me a moment. But if you know nothing about music, as I know nothing, you might find this pretty mysterious, as I did until last week, when I read a book explaining it (the book is called This Is Your Brain on Music). How do we know, if the scales are exactly the same, in which key a song is written? The answer is that in a song in C major the note C is played a lot, and played strongly, and played longer, and that the song returns to it. And a song in A minor, it is the A that is played lots, and loud, and so forth. The note that gets the most attention is a good clue to our brains about the key. It is the same with ideas. The words that get the most attention in our brains tell us what ideas are important to us.

Last week I went to a conference at the new convention center in Boston. The half-day program was sponsored by Microsoft in order to tell everybody about the new version of Microsoft Office that they are releasing. I’m a little embarrassed to admit to you that I went to this conference, and I can’t quite say why I did. It was my history as a techy, maybe, that drew me there. You know I like to think about technology, but this was kind of an overdose of it. The people there were professional technology managers, designers, and engineers.

What was amazing to me was not the software, which it turned out I didn’t really care much about. What was amazing was that it seemed to me that in many ways people had come to the convention center to worship. Not that Microsoft was like a god—far from that. But that the attitude of many of the guests was worshipful. They were there because they had a deep-seated need to know important things that affected their lives in significant ways. They came for guidance. They came for truth. They came for a way to behave, a way to live, that would give them a kind of peace in their work. They came to be nourished and energized. As someone might come to church.

I imagined what was going on in the minds of the guests. They had come to sit for at least three hours, six for some who stayed all day. What I saw—and I admit I’m just making this up—I saw a bunch of emotions. I saw boredom and anxiety. I also saw desire, a kind of lust for this technology. And coupled with that a disgust at themselves for these desires. I also saw ideas, revelations, understanding; I could see people imagining solutions, possibilities. Some had come for salvation: help me!, I’m in a pickle, show me the way out. And in some I saw a sense of dislocation. What am I doing here? What does this have to do with my life, my family, my children, my worries about the war, the kind of world I want?

Microsoft’s purpose in this conference was evangelical. That is, they had hoped to spread the word, the good news about Microsoft Office. (It is not an accident that technology companies have people called “Evangelists.”) They hoped to fill the heads of the people there with Microsoft kind of words. To think in the key of Microsoft, so to speak. Microsoft wanted people to look at the world of their own work and the problems they face with Microsoft eyes. So that when they saw something, they would think about it in terms of Microsoft products.

Except for the details, my fellow conference goers were like the people that the prophet Jeremiah was sent to talk to. Jeremiah’s audience probably wasn’t worried about Solutions Management or Continuous Content Replication, but I’m sure they had other things on their minds that were more appropriate to the age. Crops and rituals and family feuds—or whatever. Things in their world that were important, scary, and confusing. In other words, they were just ordinary people. Seeking guidance for daily tasks and decisions, a way of life, and salvation from fear and pain.

The prophets that God calls in the Bible are by and large ordinary people. Moses was embarrassed about the way he talked, David was a young shepherd, Isaiah a man of unclean lips. Jeremiah was a twelve-year-old boy. “I’m only a boy,” he said when God calls him. They were nothing special. Just ordinary people like you and me.

We are like these prophets. Hesitant to speak about things that are important to us. We are, after all, Lutherans. And some of us Yankees, to boot. We are hesitant, perhaps, to talk about our faith and our relationship with God. We are like Jeremiah, who says, “I don’t know what to say.”

It is usually not the knowing but the saying that is working against us here. We know what to say about all sorts of complicated things in our lives, things about how things work, how they ought to work, why they work the way they do. We are good at knowing and for many things in our lives, good at saying. But not so good, we think, at saying about faith.

But we don’t have to think we are good at saying, any more than Jeremiah did. Partly, because God can do the saying. “I have put words into your mouth,” God tells Jeremiah. And partly, because God tells us to. “You shall speak whatever I command you,” God tells Jeremiah. But mostly because people need to hear us.

It makes a difference—to me and to the world—which words are in my head. I can be thinking about Windows Vista, or OS X Leopard, or Ubuntu—all computer operating systems. When I think of operating systems, those words look to me like answers. Or I can be thinking about what God has done, or what God is showing me and what God wishes I would do. Or what God is showing Faith and what God wishes Faith would do. When I think about God, the words look to me mostly like questions.

We all are called to speak because it is good for people to have lots of God-words in their heads. To think in the key of God more than the key of operating systems. And we are the ones—not the only ones, but some of the ones at least, to help put God-words there.

What if we read Jeremiah replacing the Jeremiah with Faith Lutheran Church? It would go like this:

Before I formed Faith Lutheran Church, … I knew it, and before it was built, I consecrated it; I appointed it a prophet to the nations. Then Faith said, “Ah, Lord God! Truly I do not know how to speak, for I am only a small church.” But the Lord said to Faith, “Do not say, ‘I am only a small church; for you shall go to all to whom I send you, and you shall speak whatever I command you. Do not be afraid …

How would that be?

Or better, what if you put your own name where Jeremiah’s is. Think along with me: “Before I formed <your name here>, I knew <your name here>. I appointed <your name here> to be a prophet. Then <your name here> said, “I do not know how to speak. I am only an ordinary person. ” But the Lord said, Do not be afraid. I am with you.

Everybody is like the people at the computer conference. Everybody has a deep-seated need to know important things that affect their lives in significant ways. Everybody longs for guidance, for truth. Everybody wants to know how to behave, wants a way to live, that will give them peace.

You don’t know all the answers, but you’ve thought hard about the questions. And you have words in your head that maybe they have not heard yet, but long to hear in their own heads. You and I, we are ordinary people. We are the prophets.

Speak up! Do not be afraid. God is with you.

Good News How

Text: Luke 4:14-21 January 21, 2006

Jesus came bringing good news. But not everyone agreed the news was good.

This speech of Jesus we just heard are the first words of his ministry, following immediately after his baptism and his temptation in the desert. As a reader in the synagogue, he is given or chooses a passage from the prophet Isaiah. It is a song of hope and trust and change for the better for a beleaguered people. After hard times, good times are ahead. An anointed one—which is what the word messiah means—has come, called to proclaim good news. A time of restoration (Isaiah adds that “they will raise up the former devastations, they will repair the ruined cities.”)

This anointed one brings good news to the poor, frees the captives, restores sight to the blind, and liberates the oppressed.

This is a reading of promise, but to those who heard Jesus on that day, the passage is old hat. They’ve heard it countless times, so many times that perhaps it has lost its impact. To those oppressed people to whom Jesus speaks, those under Roman occupation, it sounds perhaps like wishful thinking, or whistling in the dark.

So it is a shock when Jesus puts away the scroll, and sits down, and tells them “today this scripture has been fulfilled in your hearing.”

At first they are pleased and proud. This is his home-town, he’s come back as a grown-up. Joseph and Mary’s boy. But they are little nonplussed, too. What does he mean? And by the time Jesus compares himself to the great prophet Elijah, they are furious, and they take him to the edge of the cliff and try to throw him off. But he escapes.

But his home town buddies were not the only people to be bewildered and upset by Jesus’ words or his claim to fulfill them. In his life and since that time, the poor have been worried that what he said would happen had not. And the rich have been worried that it might.

Of all the four Gospels, Luke is the most interested in the plight of the poor (and by poor, he means everyone who is disenfranchised and dispossessed). In Luke, Mary sings of the poor raised up and the mighty cast down. In Luke, the poor, the hungry, those who weep are blessed. In Luke, Jesus comes proclaiming good news to the poor. In Luke, Jesus comes to the poor.

Today’s reading has historically been a problem especially for those who not poor. Those who have things and who by and large don’t go to bed hungry. For the privileged. There is a bit of cognitive dissonance as those who are mighty try to reconcile their status with their commitment to this Son of God they follow. There have been lots of strategies to make things fit, of which the top five are these.

Strategy one. Sentimentalizing. The poor have a special life, according to this strategy, a kind of blessed life not available to the rich, a simple life. Their relationships are fundamental and their living is homey. They are good, simple folk favored by God.

Strategy two. Spiritualizing. Jesus doesn’t really mean poor when he quotes Isaiah. He means poor in spirit. Matthew does this in his version of the beatitudes. Blessed are the poor in spirit. We are all poor in some ways, even those who are materially rich. Releasing the captives doesn’t mean letting people out of prison, according to this strategy, it means releasing our inner demons.

Strategy three. Metaphorizing (that’s not a real word). The poor and blind are not real people, but symbols for something else. The exiled nation of Israel. The infidels and atheists. Evolution. Sin. This earthly life from which we will one day escape.

Strategy four. Displacing. Jesus said it, but it doesn’t mean what it sounds like. This is not about the poor, but about Jesus. The focus is not on the poor, but on the savior, who is using the poor, and this prophecy, as just one example. This passage is about Jesus’ character, not about those he happens to mention.

And strategy five. Denying. According to this strategy, this passage has nothing to do with us, Gospel readers of the past 2000 years. It is pretty, but pretty irrelevant to the faith I claim. I don’t even see why you’re talking about it. Get to the point!

The point is that no matter how hard we might try to avoid these verses or excuse them, they nag at us. In a good way. That is, they seem right. Not irrelevant or immaterial, but appealing. Jesus is not trying to fool us or frighten us. This is good news; we can feel it.

It feels good, I think, because the verbs are good. Release, restore, recover, go free. Though we may think it expedient to put people in prison, no one thinks it is good. Though people are blinded by all sorts of natural causes, no one thinks it is good. Though we might understand how one group oppresses another, no one thinks it is good.

These verbs work no matter what the context. When we hear “release to the captives,” it makes sense whether we are in prison and long to escape or in bondage to some kind of obsession and long to escape or stuck in a cycle of revenge and long to escape.

When we hear “recovery of sight to the blind” it makes sense whether we have cataracts and long to see or in ignorance and long to see or lost in mental confusion and long to see.

When Jesus refers to the year of the Lord’s favor, most scholars think this is code language in Luke for the Kingdom of God, a favorite phrase of Luke, and as much a place of the physical present as of the spiritual future. When we hear of the prisoners being set free, and the blind healed, and poverty eliminated, and oppression ended—when we hear of these things we think that’s how it will be in the Kingdom of God. When the inhumane things we do and the sorrows we suffer will no longer happen. Sickness, and sadness, and craziness, and brutality are not the way things ought to be, and in the Kingdom of God they have no place.

What draws us to this passage, what makes us embrace it instead of deny it through all those different strategies, is that we want this kingdom now, here, in our time, for humanity and all creation. Jesus says that these words of Isaiah will be fulfilled. Are fulfilled.

As Christians, we are officially naïve. Intentionally so. We believe Jesus when he says things like this. We live expecting the Kingdom of God, and we trust that the Spirit will strengthen and guide us to help make that so. There will be an end to captivity, poverty, blindness, and oppression. Jesus proclaimed this good news. And we agree it is good.

Praising Mediocrity

Text: 1 Corinthians 12:1-11 January 14, 2007

Let's hear it for mediocrity.

Let us celebrate just getting by. Let us commend doing less than your best. Let us extol what in the college I went to they called “gentleman's Cs.” Let us praise doing okay, satisfactory, good enough.

If this makes you squeamish, you are in the right culture and the right time. “Be all you can be” is not just an advertising slogan, it is the motto for our times. Kindly mentors tell their charges, “I don’t care how well you do, just as long as you do your best.” That is, the results don’t have to be perfect, but the effort better be.

To live in the expectation of giving 100% all the time is to live constantly on the edge of judgment. And if effort, and not result, is the criterion, then there is never a time for rest, for a little slack, for down time. And we’ll always fall short, for the job is never done, because the job is not accomplishing something but working hard. Which has no end. Live hard, play hard, is hard. Where is the Sabbath in that?

It is a kind of idolatry. Anything that commands us—orders us around—and commands our attention—that we pay attention to in a constant awareness—that thing, that force is an idol for us. Doing the best you can is a close cousin to striving for perfection. And they are both good friends of optimization: striving to make things the best possible, rather than simply satisfactory. [A friend] says I’m an optimizer when parking my car in our neighborhood. I want to be right in front of our house, so I look for the rarely-found elusive perfect spot, while passing by good spaces a half-block away that she would have taken. And perfection and optimization are both buddies with performance. Performance is doing something for the presentation of it and usually also to impress. A good performance is perfect (though no real performance ever quite is, just as no real endeavor ever quite is, either).

There are times when performance matters. When someone’s life depends on what you do, for example. But even less dramatically, in competitive situations, doing the best, optimizing, and such can make a difference. This week Steve Jobs, the head of Apple, introduced a new iPod/cell phone combo device at the MacWorld Conference in San Francisco. It was an amazing performance. The New York times said: “has there even been anybody in the history of marketing to introduce products with the sheer dazzling showmanship of the legendary Apple chief executive?” The day after the performance, Apple’s stock rose 10%.

But we, even Steve Jobs, rarely are called to situations so critical as to demand perfection and ultimate effort. That doesn’t mean that people won’t make those demands, people like bosses, families, spouses. We ourselves are sometimes the most strident demand-ers. But just because you can do something well doesn’t mean you have to. As someone said [Chesterton], if something is worth doing, it is worth doing badly. Sometimes a C- is plenty enough.

There needs to be a place in our lives where you don’t have to be all you can be. Where you can do less than best, and where perfection is neither expected nor desired. If we are lucky, home is such a place. As Robert Frost’s character says, “Home is the place where, when you have to go there, they have to take you in.” Regardless of your performance. Though for some, homes are not that.

But the church is. Or should be. We worship a God of grace, as Pastor Seitz reminded us last week. God loves you no matter what. We have to say this over and over because it is hard to believe. Too good to be true. Very good. You have no obligation to God to live up to your potential. If “living up to your potential” is something you have to do, then it is a “work” in the classic Lutheran meaning. That is, something you do to earn God’s forgiveness, favor, and blessing. And we are taught that there is no such requirement. In Christ’s church, it is okay regardless. You don’t have to get it right.

When Paul writes this letter we heard to the church at Corinth, he writes to a group of people who are strutting around saying what good performers they all are. They all think they are Steve Jobs. That is, they think they are great, and each one thinks that he or she is doing the most important job. Paul wants to cool this competitive and ferocious ardor a bit. So he tells them three things,

First, everything you do in the church, he tells them, is for the good of the church. The “common good,” it says in the reading. The word means “to carry with others,” to share the work like a bunch of people trying to lift a heavy box. None of you is the CEO.

Second, none of the things you do is more important than the things other people do. All are necessary, he says later on in the letter, for the functioning of the body of Christ, the church. And you are not so smart that you can say one thing is more important than another, because it is not. To make himself clear, Paul says neither (A) gifts (like prophecy or praying or evangelism), nor (B) service (like helping others and visiting them or comforting them), nor just work (like anything not covered by A and B). The Greek words, FYI, are the base of the English words charisma, deacon, and energy. They are all part of the church. Gifts, service, and work.

And third, and most important, Paul tells them that it is not they but the Spirit who is responsible for the gifts, service, and work that they bring.

Unlike a manager in a corporation, God does not try to recruit the best people available for the job. God does not ask for resumes for the folk God invites to the church. It is not because God sees all people as valuable, though that is no doubt true. But it is because that is not how it works. God does not assemble the church out of available parts. God does not put together a team.

The church is the people who gather there. The Spirit takes those people and allots the gifts, services, and work according to the way the Spirit chooses. It is not so much that there are a diversity of skills brought to the church to be assigned. But that there are a diversity of gifts, service, and work that the Spirit dispenses among the people who have actually gathered. When people come to church they are transformed by the Spirit (“activated,” it says in our reading; but “energized” would be better). So it is sufficient; the church lacks nothing.

That is why no one in Corinth can be too proud, because it is the Spirit’s allotment that they have. And it also why being the best you can be is totally foreign to this passage, because you may not have been chosen for what you do best, but for something, maybe, that you don’t even do very well. But that you have been energized to do nonetheless. Nothing that happens here depends on your being skillful, even though everything that happens here is a result of your skills.

There is something wonderful and rich about this. Long ago, when I was first starting to come back to worshiping in a church after a twenty-year break, I went to a minister friend to ask what I could do to serve, to help other people besides myself and family. She quoted me a passage a little further on in Corinthians, saying to me “people have lots of gifts. Perhaps you are serving by doing what you are doing best already.” It was not what I wanted to hear. I wanted to do something that someone needed. I did not want to be valued for what I already could do. I wanted to be seized by God and led to a place that needed someone, anyone, even me. And so at my friend’s suggestion I started volunteering in a prison, where I was energized by the Spirit, though I would not have put it that way then, and transformed to do my barely satisfactory work there. Which was good enough. And for me, freeing and revealing and life-changing.

The pews of the church are made for those who choose to sit in them. The church provides a sanctuary—a safe place, a holy place, meaning a place set apart. The are enough forces in the world, in our lives, that drive us to perfect, optimum, arduous, performance and 100% effort. But the church, a sanctuary set apart, need not be one of them. It is a place to put all that aside for a bit. It is okay. This is your home. A place to bask in the grace-filled approval of God, and to be energized by the Spirit.

Tactics

Text: Colossians 3:12-27 December 31, 2006

Welcome, children of God, holy and beloved.

Modern Protestant Christianity is a long on strategy and short on tactics. Or to be more churchy: long on theology and short on practices. Or what Christianity calls disciplines: things we can do to live the kind of faithful life we would like to live. It is great to know that we are justified by God's grace, but now what? What do we do day to day, hour to hour, knowing we have been freed from the power of death?

For Protestants, disciplines have usually been put at the back of the drawer, along with the unpaired socks and the squashed penny souvenir from the Space Needle. Something not very useful but not yet ready for the trash. Luther and especially his fellow reformers felt that Christians had been captive to the rules and regulations of the Roman church, and so de-emphasized many powerful but traditional disciplines that they thought enslaved people to the church hierarchy. And in our time, people have been confused about how and how much their faith can and should be expressed in public, as opposed to personal or private, lives. There is a school of thought that imagines faith to be something emotional—a feeling, sort of—or belief, but not something real; as real, say, as paying the rent or dealing with your boss or your significant other. Practical things.

But the need for guidance—we have been saved by Christ; now what do we do today, or this minute?—is a question even the earliest Christian communities struggled with. The passage in the letter to the Colossians we just heard from tries to help its readers with an answer.

It is likely that this epistle was written by someone other than Paul, some time after his death, but to a group of followers of Jesus who are trying to conform their lives to Jesus. How should they do that? The letter presents a kind of argument, or a kind of program, for behavior. In summary, the argument says that we can act in a certain way out of power that comes from Christ. In detail, the argument has four parts.

First, it starts by making clear that the things that usually guide people’s actions: power, position, safety, revenge, things like that, are not helpful to Christians. Instead, the people are urged to be compassionate, kind, humble, gentle, and patient. What these five things have in common is a tendency to put others before ourselves. To consider others to be equal to or better than we are. Counter-cultural, for sure. [As one scholar explains:] To waive one’s rights rather than be concerned for personal gain. To not become frustrated and enraged but to make allowances for other people’s exasperating behavior. To acknowledge as if we were feeling it ourselves the pain that others feel. All these things are essential, Colossians argues, for the sake of the community. And the community in the end is the whole world.

But this is a list of goals, not tactics. Easy to note, hard to do. So the second part of the argument backs up a step. Everybody wants to be compassionate. No one wants to hurt others. But how can we do that? We start with what we know. And what we know is the word of Christ. Which in our case means the words of Jesus (his teachings, prayers, and parables) and the words about Jesus (the Gospels, and also the words that others tell us about their own experiences of Christ) and about the words in our own heads and hearts about Jesus (our own experiences of Jesus in life, in prayer, and in worship and song).

“Let the word of Christ dwell in you richly,” the people are told. The word is like food. Rich food. Good food. Delicious and nutritious. As rich as Christmas chocolate and good wine and as nutritious as tofu and green beans. Like food, the word of Christ gives us energy, power, and substance. It is necessary for life and action. Let the food-like word of Christ be in you, says Colossians. That means: don’t fill up on other things; don’t spoil your appetite. And it means: seek the word; spend time in the pantry and looking into the refrigerator. Snacks would be good, too.

The third part of the argument is that the word of Christ leads to peace. The peace is a result of confidence that in Christ, death has no power to rule us. What we learn from the word of Christ is that we can live without fear. Or maybe more practically, that when we have fears—which we are bound to have—that we can turn to the word of Christ to remind us that the fears are—at their core—groundless.

“Let the peace of Christ rule in your hearts,” the people are told. There are lots of other things that might rule in our hearts. What are the things that pull us, move us, and rule us? Wanting to be admired, to be safe and secure, to be loved, to not be lonely, laughed at, ignored. To get good grades. To get back at someone, to be left alone, to not be bothered. But of all those things, says Colossians, the peace that Christ brings is the ruler of them all. They are the subjects. You tell them to hush, to quiet down a bit, to chill. Let peace have its sway, says Colossians. Let peace be the boss.

The goal drives us. The word powers us. The peace frees us. But it is Jesus who shows us what to do. The fourth part of the argument is that empowered by the word and freed from the power of fear and death, we live our daily lives through the guidance of Jesus. “Do everything in the name of the Lord Jesus,” says Colossians.

As we do anything, keep Jesus is mind. Think to yourself: I do this in the name of Jesus. I come across a beggar on the street. Could you say: “I give this dollar in the name of Jesus.” How about: “I pass on by in the name of Jesus.”

Could you say: I admire the sky in the name of Jesus. I eat this Special K cereal in the name of Jesus. I vote for this person in the name of Jesus. How about: I complain about my boss in the name of Jesus. I throw this trash on the street in the name of Jesus. I smoke this cigar in the name of Jesus. How about that?

I paint this picture. I visit my aunt. I take the dog for a walk. I give some money to Oxfam. I buy an iPod. I fix my car. I write this nasty letter or this complimentary one.

Do everything in the name of the Lord Jesus. In some things we do it is easy to add “in the name of Jesus.” “I donate to Lutheran World Relief.” “I say hello to the ticket taker.” In others, it makes us uncomfortable. Rightly so. “I cheat on my taxes.” Or makes us embarrassed or sad. “I steal from my business colleague.” “I refuse to call my father.” Or so bad and secret that it makes us go “la la-la la-la. I don’t want to hear you.” The rule of thumb for Colossians is this: judge what you do, or intend to do, by considering whether you would be comfortable doing it “in the name of Jesus.” If you would, then do it. If you wouldn’t, then don’t.

Thinking about Jesus in all we do helps us pay attention to life and our lives. It is a kind of mindfulness. It is a discipline, a habit of being that helps us live more intentionally (that is, not by accident or distractedly or carelessly). It helps us to notice the world more (makes that Special K taste better and the clouds more beautiful and the iPod more amazing), it helps us do with less (because we take time and enjoy the pleasures of appreciation), and it helps us be virtuous as defined in Colossians (because we notice that others are much like ourselves).

It sounds from all this that faith proceeds practice. But it is usually the opposite. If we wait until we feel spiritually ready, we’ll never start. It is like trying to write the perfect love letter, which being never perfect never gets sent, and the lovers never meet. Spiritual practice is not like a final exam, best taken after much preparation. It is more like trying to fix a faucet. You just start, and if you find that you have to rush to the hardware store to find the right bolt, then back a while later to get that special tool—well, that’s how such things go. And that’s how most of us learn about plumbing.

Faith is like that. You start out doing things in the name of Jesus. And in your heart, the peace of Christ begins to rule, and in you, the word of Christ begins to make itself at home. And pretty soon, you find yourself acting with compassion, kindness, humility, gentleness, and patience. And you begin to see, as Colossians says at the very first, that you are chosen by God, holy, and beloved.

One Tough Cookie

Text: Luke 1.47-55 December 24, 2006

Let’s not make Mary out to be too sweet. Let’s not put her in a beautiful blue robe (why is it always blue?), with blushing cheeks and flowing hair, a contemplative smile, and a halo-like glow surrounding her.

Mary was a street kid, or would be if she lived now in the city. She was very poor. Her husband-to-be, Joseph, was a carpenter, not an admired craftsman but low on the economic ladder, a rung even lower than a subsistence farmer. She was probably young, maybe thirteen or fourteen. She lived in a really bad time for Jews in Palestine. Roman armies patrolled the streets, and crucifixion was common for minor crimes, including not knowing your place, or talking about a time when Israel might be free again. If you kept your mouth shut you might keep your life.

Mary was one tough young lady. Not at all fragile and shy and retiring. We do her an injustice if we sentimentalize her. When we do, it is too easy to forget that Mary has something to do with Jesus besides being a vessel for God’s grand scheme. Some call her the first model of a Christian disciple, and if that is true, we who are trying to follow Christ need to see her as an agent in the story of God’s work.

Today we read aloud Mary’s response to Gabriel’s message. This beautiful song, called the Magnificat—from the first word in the Latin version—is a song about God shaking things up, unsettling things, and delivering on a promise. Listen, disciples of Christ, to the three things that Mary says.

Mary says Yes.

She says Yes to God’s invitation, even though it would have been very clear to her that lying low would be more prudent. It was not a good time to be talking about a Messiah or the restoration of the power of Israel and in memory of its great former King David. That would be dangerous talk.

And it is clear that Mary knew it, for her song is all about turning things on their heads. Things that seem to be settled will be unsettled. Things will be stirred up, and when things get stirred up, stuff on the bottom and stuff on the top can mix in odd ways, and the dregs can become the cream. Raising up the poor and, more threateningly, bringing down the rich. Raising up the lowly and, worse, throwing down those in power—the mighty down from their thrones. This is seditious, Mary’s song is.

And into this world, and into this mess, Mary will bring a child who is not going to be shy about his mission. Mary knows it. I’m sure that’s what she ponders in her heart when her son is finally born.

Yet, smart and tough, Mary says Yes. Yes. I’ll bear the son of God and I’ll raise him and fear for him and be proud of him and watch him through to his end. Yes, she says.

When God calls, who knows what is going to happen? We don’t live in perfect times, no one ever has. If we are waiting for conditions to be just right before we do anything—in our lives or in our world—we’ll never say Yes. And we cannot set conditions, no bargaining with God. I’ll do this if you, God, make sure everything will work out the way I want it to. That is not to say you can’t complain to God or make demands of God or be unhappy with where God takes you. And I’m sure if you do that God will listen and will promise to be with you all the way. It’s just that it will be God’s way, not yours.

Mary says Help!

Mary is not afraid to ask for help, or to be person who agrees she needs help. A savior has come, she sings. To be saved, you need something to be saved from. To be redeemed, you need to be captured by something. Saving means healed, and to welcome healing—and Mary does—you have to admit you are not doing all that well.

When you are privileged you get things no one else does: you never have to wait, and you never have to be crowded. But all the rest of us live in a world constrained by other people and by time and logistics. We are limited, as creatures are. Mary calls the privileged “proud in their conceit,” and in the King James Version of the Bible she calls them “proud in the imagination of their hearts.” In the Greek, it is “arrogant in their understanding of their hearts.” In other words, they don’t think they need anything.

Christianity does not have much to offer to people who are totally satisfied with the way they are and the ways things are in the world. But who is so satisfied? Not the people in Mary’s situation or in the situation of any real person that I know.

To say Help! means to admit that we need help. That we would welcome some divine intervention because we need that intervention. That we cannot do it, whatever it is, without help, and that we welcome God’s hand in our lives.

And Mary says Hooray!

The whole song is one big Hooray! Hooray not for Mary herself, though that, too (“The Almighty has done great things for me,” she says). But hooray that God’s regime is, or soon will be, the one in power. For the writer of Luke’s Gospel, who the ruler of the world is—Caesar or God—is one of the main points of the coming of Jesus. And to Mary, the answer is definite and clear. The jubilation that Mary feels is the joy at a major good change in things. Maybe it’s like the way the Democrats felt at the last election. Or to be a little more personal, the way you might feel getting married, or having a child, or beginning a new friendship. In the present event there are signs so definite and true as to be certain that a new future is about to unfold. A great future.

Christians live under a promise. For some, that seems absurd. Things go on, and what will be is what will be. There might be hope, but to the cynical it is more like whistling in the dark. But it is part of the fabric of Christianity to be naïve enough to think that God has something in store for this world that will recover and renew it.

The story of the Bible is a story of an ongoing relationship between God and people. We do not have a faith in which God does all the work while we sit around like lumps. Nor do we have a faith in which people struggle or prevail by themselves while God watches without much interest. The history of our faith—over time and for some, in our individual lives—is a conversation, full, as for Mary, of both contemplation and passion.

Advent rushes up against Christmas, especially in this year when we celebrate both in the same day. The song of Mary is like the overture to the greater song. Which in itself is a duet. Call and response. One asks for help, the other responds. One calls in invitation, the other agrees. And in the heavens and on this earth, all say Hooray!

Amen.

Slackers

Text: Zephaniah 3:14-20

It seems that a confluence of factors has put the stress-o-meter off the scale. I know that because I can see stress in your faces and the faces of just about everyone I know. I hear it in your voices and the voices of others. I see it in your lives and the lives of others.

The stress-o-meter rises whenever there is something to stress about. And the stress-o-meter tells me that we are in a tight spot. There is way too much to worry about. Even if nothing worrisome is happening in your own life, you might worry about things happening to the world: wars and genocide—Iraq, Palestine, Sudan; the 40 million people living with AIDS; the spread of nuclear weapons; individuals blowing themselves and other people up; oppression and slavery; melting ice caps. These things crank up the stress-o-meter a couple of notches.

But I’d bet that it is stress closer to home—closer to our individual selves—that is wearing us down the most. It is the usual stuff, I’m sure. Papers and projects due, long nights at the office; looking for a job or to get out of a job that gives you the creeps. Moving from one house to a new one; or from one town to a new one. Trying to find a good relationship or get out of a bad one. Caring for a cranky child or a cranky parent. Seeing people we love change in weird ways and wondering how to deal with that.

It is not like these things are new, really. In the Gospel reading, people ask Jesus what they should do to change their lives. And Jesus speaks to them about things that are on their minds. Having the basics for life: clothing, food. Trying to be a good person. Trying to do an excellent job.

Yet knowing that people are and have been in the same boat doesn’t help. The total of all the items on our lists can be impossible to deal with, and, God knows, the burden of all our chores and worries takes way too much energy to bear and doesn’t leave us much for joy, which is the word for today, this third Advent Sunday.

But it is not the quantity of things by itself that stresses us. I don’t stress in anticipation of doing something well, or even doing it OK. So say I’m signed up to make a birthday cake for a friend’s party. If I think I can do that easily, or that if I can’t it doesn’t matter much, or that I can accomplish the same goal by doing something else (like buying a cake), that’s one thing.

But if I think I’m going to mess up, that’s something else. That’s stress. We stress about things when we are afraid we are going to mess up, or might. When we are afraid that if we can’t or don’t come through something bad will happen to us or to people we love or people who count on us. It is not the work. It is not the prospect of the doing itself, it is the fear that we might do it badly. It is that feeling that wakes us up at 5:30 in the morning. That things will go wrong. When we fear we might be bad.

At the center of Christianity is the resurrection of Jesus. The meaning of the resurrection spreads widely throughout the teachings and life of Christian faith. One of the corollaries of the resurrection is that God will make all things new. That what seems to be the end is not, and that we are not condemned by our past. That a way has been made to the future that is different from the past. In the adventure of God, the most horrible thing can butt right up against the more wonderful thing.

And another corollary of the resurrection is that forgiveness is a part of everything that happens between us and God. That God is not only willing to forgive us but that God fervently desires to.

We use the word “forgiveness” so often that we might mistake its power. It means let off the hook, in a big way. Imagine you are on trial for a major crime. Life in prison. Then imagine the verdict is announced: acquitted! That’s like being forgiven. Imagine you have a lump or a sore, and you are afraid that means an invasive cancer. Then imagine the diagnoses is announced: benign! That’s like being forgiven.

The book of Zephaniah from which we heard this morning has only three chapters. The first two are a rant about how bad Judah and its neighbors have been and what jerks they are and how things are destined for a bad end. But then, in the last verses of the book, God acquits the people. The Lord takes away all judgments against them, it says. So “sing aloud, O Israel! Rejoice and exult with all your heart.” All their burdens—the lame and the outcast will be saved, the prophets says—will be lifted. The Lord will rejoice over them and be glad.

God forgives us not only because God is good, it seems, but because God is made glad by forgiving us. God is made glad by seeing God’s people—that means you and me—seeing God’s people be joyful.

God will forgive us for the things that we mess up. It is not our job nor are we able to get everything right. Maybe we are overly responsible. (A little proud, even, hesitant to leave things in the hands of others or the hand of God.) You know in advance that God will forgive you. Perhaps you could know in advance that you will forgive yourself if you mess up. Even if you make mistakes, get it wrong, even really wrong. God cut Israel a little slack, and Israel messed up pretty bad. You know that God will cut you a little slack, no matter how much you mess up. Perhaps, knowing that, you can cut yourself a little slack, too. It’s okay. It’s all right.

I’m not saying this is simple to do. I’m not saying that things we do are not important, even really important. (Though not eternally important.) I’m not encouraging people to forsake their duties and commitments or to become cynical about them. God does not say to Israel, “who cares? Not a big deal, guys.” God does say, “It would make me glad to see you full of joy.”

No one likes to see you wake up at 5:30 in the morning full of worries. Not even God.

One way to think about this is: if God will forgive you when you mess up, who are you to dispute God’s judgment? Another way is: if God wants you to have a little fun, maybe you should.

The prophet tells us that God rejoices in our joy. God brings us home, says Zephaniah, and God “will renew you in his love. He will exult over you with loud singing, as on a day of festival.” Like today.

Name Renewed

Text: Jeremiah 33:14-16 December 3, 2006

What is your name?

In the Commonwealth of Massachusetts your name is what you are known by. If you decide to change your name from Fred to Ferdinand you just tell everyone you meet that your name is Ferdinand. And it is. No need to go to court or post listing in the paper or anything like that. According to the law, your name is not unchangeable and inherent, but depends on your actions (telling and using your name) and on your choices. It says something about you, or can.

Historically, names tell about relationships. With your family, for example. So Ericson is son of Eric, Petrova is the daughter of Peter. Or your relationship with your job. So Cooper is a barrel maker, and Stein (meaning stone) is a stone cutter, and Smith is a blacksmith. Or your relationship with your town or place. So the Jesus we follow is Jesus of Nazareth; or more modernly: Kierkegaard, the family that lived by the church, the kierke; or Jack London, from London.

In the time in which Jeremiah prophesied, the people of Israel had become confused about their name, the name of their nation and people. Not the name itself, really, but the significance of it. Not what they were called, but what they were called in the eyes of God and the nations. Their name had been given to them centuries ago by God after Jacob wrestled with an angel. But now, it seems that their relationship was heading for divorce. Having been exiled from Judah, having the Temple—the house for God—destroyed, what did they mean to God, and what did God mean to them? Were they a people of the land? Or of a system of beliefs? Or adherents to some special code? Or nothing special?

In the passage we just heard, Jeremiah tells the people that in the hopes of God the day is soon coming when they will know again who they are. A leader will spring up, says the Lord, who will be just and righteous. And Jerusalem will have a new name: The Lord is our righteousness.

This is kind of a strange name. A little long, but nice. Where do you come from? I come from the place named “The Lord is our righteousness.” That is the name of my community. That is the name of my home. That is the name of my people. It tells us something, like the names of old, Richardson whose dad was Richard, or the Fishers who worked on the sea. It tells us something important about them and about their relationships. It tells us something about how the holder of this name relates to God.

The name “the Lord is our righteousness” means two things. First, it means that when we are looking for righteousness—that is, when we are trying to find out how to live in the best way possible—we look to God, we turn to God. So the name tells us something about ourselves. It tells us on whom we depend. And second, it also means that when we are trying to figure out what God is like and what God intends for and with us, that we know that God is righteous. So the name tells us something about God.

Righteousness does not mean morally blameless (as it is mostly used now). It means truthful, ethical, fair, things in line with what God hoped for when God created the gift of the world and life, the way things were designed to be in the imagination of God. A righteous world is not one in which everyone walks around telling everyone how good they are, being righteous and all, or how good everyone else, probably not righteous, should be. It is a world in which widows and orphans—code words for people who are poor, oppressed, have a hard time functioning or coping—in which the disposed are cared for by those in possession, in which those without power are protected by those in power, in which the strong are peacemakers.

Perhaps “the Lord is our righteousness” would be a good name for us, the world in our time, our culture, ourselves, you and me. We too are confused about our name. All sorts of forces surround us, just as in the time of Jeremiah. And in the time of Jesus that Luke writes about. What shall we be known by? Shall we be known as powerful and rich? Generous and courageous? Self-indulgent? self-sacrificing? What shall we be known by? What name will we choose that tells people to whom we turn? And what name will we choose that tells people what is important about the God we follow?

The rite of baptism that we just celebrated is full of names. We are the devil-renouncers. We are the ignorers of empty promises. We are the redeemed ex-slaves. We are the people freed from the power of sin and death. We are the people who praise God in thanksgiving for the gifts of life. That is who we are.

In baptism we get a new identity. We become known as a Christian. Once people’s first names were known as “Christian” names. Meaning that in baptism one receives a new name to go with the new life. We say that we become members of the body of Christ. We are bearers of a light that shines unmistakably before others.

Advent is a time of repentance, a word that means turning. Turning over a new leaf, in one sense. But in another, more powerful sense, means turning back to view what we have been and to consider whether we might be something else in the future. Something new. It is a good time to think about our real name. Who are we? Who are we really? What is our real name, the name that describes us perfectly in the center of ourselves?

Your name is what you are known by. What name shall that be?