Believing Jesus and Justice

Text: Luke 4:1-11
Other texts: Portions of Isaiah

For people and for nations, suffering reveals in them deep and cold theological questions. For faithful people, and especially people who, like Israel, had been chosen and named as God’s people, the question is not whether God exists. God does. The question in the darkest times is whether God cares. Does God care for them? And if God does care, is God good? And if God cares and is good, is this caring, good, God stronger than evil?

In the Gospel of Luke, Jesus is introduced to the world and prepared for his ministry in it by the Holy Spirit. It is the power of the Spirit that impregnates Mary. The Spirit who reveals the identity of Jesus to Simeon when Jesus was just a baby. It is the Spirit who comes at his baptism. It is the Spirit that fills Jesus before it leads him out into the desert to be tempted by the devil. It is the Spirit who escorts him back to Galilee to preach his first sermon. The one we just heard him preach today. It is the Spirit that will anoint him as a fulfillment of Isaiah’s prophecy, making him the Messiah, the anointed one. There is no question in Luke’s mind about the source of the ministry of Jesus. It comes from the Holy Spirit.

Nor is there a question of where his ministry is going. This passage we just heard is Jesus’ first public act in the Gospel of Luke. And that act is a sermon. Jesus opens the Bible—taking the scroll of Isaiah—and finds the words of God he wants to talk about. He reads from the 61st chapter of Isaiah, a reading that echoes the themes of the Magnificat that Mary his mother sang when Jesus was still in the womb. About the poor, the prisoner, the blind, the oppressed. About the year of the Lord’s favor (the Jubilee, when debt is forgiven and slaves freed—imagine that!). Putting the reading aside, Jesus delivers his very short sermon—one sentence—relating the scripture people have just heard to their lives, as all sermons should. This reading, he says, has been fulfilled in their hearing.

This story is like an overture to the whole of story of the ministry of Jesus in Luke. Or an abstract, a précis. It explains how Jesus came to be here—by the power of the Spirit. Who he is—the anointed one. His mission—to proclaim good news to the poor and oppressed. And, in the verses just beyond today’s passage: what will happen to him—rejection and eventually execution. This passage ties Jesus to salvation history—God’s work in the world—and to the prophecy of a new world, one that is good and one that is just.

It ties him to the people’s hope of a messiah. But by choosing Isaiah as the reading for the day, Jesus reveals his particular messianic program and the focus of his attention. A return to the fundamentals, as Isaiah saw them.

Isaiah condemned the ceremony and piety of the Israelites, who had forgotten to care for the poor and dispossessed. The Book of Isaiah starts with God saying: “I’ve had enough of burnt offerings, new moons, sabbaths and convocations … I cannot bear your worthless assemblies.” That’s pretty clear. And later God judges their self-serving piousness, saying “Look, you serve your own interests … [while you] oppress all your workers.” And God reminds them that God’s call to them is “to loose the bonds of injustice, … to let the oppressed go free, … to share your bread with the hungry, … and bring the homeless poor into your house.”

By choosing the passage that he did from Isaiah, Jesus is announcing that it is this tradition on which he now stands, into which he has now been anointed. He is reiterating God’s primary call to attend to the needs of others. He has come to restore Israel and the world. And his program to do that: is to restore justice, equity, compassion, and care for the uncared-for.

You might understand, as some have over the years, you might understand this sermon of Jesus to be a declaration. An argument for the proof of his divine authority. He is speaking of godly pronouncements and, even more, of godly intentions. He claims the favor of the Holy Spirit and to be the anointed one. He fulfills the prophecies.

Or you might understand this sermon to be an exhortation: a call to action, a command. Jesus has come to restore justice and we should, too. He is not just saying this is a good idea, but that it is way of being that God commands and that is essential to the salvation—the healing—of the world. If we do not do as Jesus claims here (and will later command more explicitly), then what is broken will remain so.

Or you might understand this to be an announcement of good news especially to those whom he names: people who are poor, who are blind, prisoners of war (which is what “captive” means), to free those who are oppressed and abused (the word he uses means to be bruised). Or more generally people who suffer because of poverty, because of illness or accident; people who are imprisoned, enslaved or indentured; people who are exploited by others; people who are tyrannized by debt.

Jesus’ sermon is greeted with praise. All spoke well of him and were amazed, it says. It seems that they believe Jesus. And that they approve of his claim. And his plan. Yet, a couple of minutes later, in verses that immediately follow, they try to throw him off a cliff. There is a reason for that. Which is that he tells them that he will do lots of great things, but not for them, his hometown neighbors.

Why is this sermon at first greeted with such praise? And then with such anger? You might think that the crowd Jesus is speaking to is made up mostly of oppressed persons, a crowd of poor blind captives. But that is probably not so. It was a mixed audience.

Everyone is thrilled. Everyone is thrilled because no one likes an evil world, in spite of appearances. People do not like injustice, even if they benefit from it. They do not like imprisoning people, even if they pass laws to make it happen. They do not like oppressing people even when their actions bolster oppression.

They praise Jesus because they believe him. They think maybe he really can restore the world to the way it should have been and should be. Back to the Garden. That is why his neighbors are so unhappy when he quickly denies their hopes for a miracle. They are extremely disappointed, which only makes sense if they were extremely hopeful.

Jesus is making an announcement, which is this: you are right to think that evil is evil, and that this is not the way the world was made or the way the world has to be. God does care, God is good, God is stronger than evil.

Jesus is making a declaration, good news for all. It is this: reality is good and just, or can be. That what seems to be injustice can be reversed. That poverty can be undone. That exploitation can be stopped. That love is stronger than hate. The evil of the world can be fought and defeated. It is the messiah who will bring that about. And God is behind it.

But finally, it is also a charge to us, an exhortation, a should. The exhortation is this: that we—especially Christians—should live our lives as if there was a least a possibility of this becoming true. Not to dismiss it as either irrelevant or mythical or unrealistic or impractical. We should live as if the promise of justice is possible. For us and the world.

And the charge is this: that the day to day decisions of our lives—the things we do, the way we vote, the way we earn and spend, the things we say, the way we look at and evaluate situations, the way we judge and forgive, the way we deal with every other person—should be made in light of that promise.

A Motley Crew

Text: 1 Corinthians 12:1-11

Martin Luther was against the practice of serving the Lord’s Supper in private. Wealthy parishioners would ask the priest to come to their homes so that they could eat the body and blood of Christ without have to journey to the church, or to take the time, and without having to associate with the riffraff. Luther wrote that the essence of Holy Communion was not just in the words of institution—this is my body, this is my blood—but in the gathering of the people who come to hear those words and to share the meal together in one place. When Jesus said “do this,” he did not just mean say some words, as if they were magic; he meant the whole event of the Last Supper at which he spoke: the assembly of the people, called together, hearing the Word of God together, reflecting and praying together, and eating together.

The apostle Paul had the same issue with his congregation at Corinth. The people were not eating together. Some ate ahead of time, some went hungry, Paul says, and some came in drunk. “Do you show contempt for the church of God and humiliate those who have nothing?” he asks them. It’s a rhetorical question. They do.

A church is a congregation, a word whose root means to collect into a flock. There is no such thing as a congregation of one. Can you imagine a church with only one person? A preacher, but no one to hear. A person adding a prayer to the prayers of the people, but no one to share his or her concerns and celebrations. Some one sharing the Lord’s Supper, but no one to share it with. A colleague in a dwindling church once told me that sometimes there were only four persons present on a Sunday: “The Father, the Son, the Holy Spirit, and me,” he said. That might be a fine and worthwhile experience, but it was not church.

Paul writes this, his first letter to the church at Corinth, because the church is full of dissension and division. Some people evidently think themselves to be better than others, more valuable, more deserving, or more essential. Some think of themselves as too good for the others. Paul writes this letter to correct them. “I do not commend you,” is his polite way of putting it.

A church is made up of all sorts of people. They are an odd assortment. They are odd for two reasons. First, the only thing they have to have in common, what unifies them, is their confession that Jesus is Lord. Second, within that one common thing they are a motley crew. Not shabby, but variegated. These two things: unity and diversity, define the church.

The church is a place of unity. Unity is essential. We are not just any old odd assortment of people. We are a particular odd assortment of people who see God’s presence in our lives and the life of the world, and who try to follow Jesus.

We can see that we are each recipient of gifts of the Spirit. But the gifts are the work of the Spirit, Paul writes, not our work. We all have different gifts, but we see that they come from God. It is the same God for all of us. “There are varieties of gifts, but the same Spirit,” Paul says. The same Lord. The same God. These gifts are given to us through God’s grace (grace and gift share the same root).

These gifts of the Spirit are not something to be hoarded or displayed on a shelf. They are given to us for the common good, Paul says. They are given in context of the church community. They appear not as a private skill, but as a public offering, to be shared and enjoyed—and admired—by all. In that sense, gifts are a calling. They are given to us not just for us to take, but to help us serve others.

The church is a place of diversity. Diversity is essential. The gifts are allotted to each of us, Paul says, just as the Spirit chooses. This does not mean the the Spirit blesses some more than others. All gifts are blessings. They are all manifestations of the Spirit. It does mean that what we get does not depend on who we are or what we have accomplished. Paul’s point is that no gift—no ability, we would say now days—is better than the next; his complaint with the Corinthians is that they think the opposite—and act accordingly. As we often do.

Both the unity of the church and diversity of the church come from God. They are essential in the sense that without both, an institution is not a church. But this does not mean that God assembles us like different Lego pieces into some pre-designed finished project. We are called here, but not because some gift we have is needed. It is the other way around. We are called here because we are. And the resulting church is the church that emerges from our gathering.

The church—this church, Faith Lutheran Church—is what it is because of the gifts we all bring together now, in this moment in history. The church cannot exist as a monolith—unity without diversity. But the particular way it exists depends on the particular flock collected here by God. We are all needed in common because this church would not be this church if even one of us was not here. It would be some other church.

Hospitality, tradition, and doctrine create a framework on which we construct the church, just like the scaffold in the pictures you see around here of this building being constructed one hundred years ago. We read a common scripture, and we sing common hymns and pray common prayers. These things are important and good and influential, but they do not define this place.

The church is not without history. Its unity and diversity extend back in time, to include all those who came before us and forward to all who will come later. (Because we have such a rapidly changing membership, we can see that in the small even now; as people come and go, you can see the church change.) Those who sat in these pews before us also make the church what it is now. And we make it what it will be decades hence. That realization is a big part of why the Building Faith capital campaign even exists. It is our turn.

We are calling today Commitment Sunday, because today we begin to record people’s promises—their commitments—to help repair, maintain, and improve this building which is the center of this church’s ministries. But what we do today is a small part of a larger reality. It is an extension of a commitment you and everyone who is part of this community of Faith has already made. We are all in this endeavor just in the way Apostle Paul described it. We have been given gifts of the Spirit—a variety of gifts—and the interplay of those gifts makes Faith what it is. By just being here today, you are a part of what the church is and will be.

These gifts are manifestations of the Spirit. It is a good word for this season of Epiphany. When Paul writes, the word he uses for manifest shares the same root as the word epiphany. Like epiphany, manifest means to reveal. The church is not just a beneficiary of the gifts of the Spirit. It also reveals them. Sometimes only God can see at first what a person’s gift is. And sometimes people in a church can see the gifts of others that the others do not recognize in themselves. And sometimes, as in Building Faith, the work of the church calls out—reveals—astounding gifts that have up until now remained hidden to us. God gives us gifts, God sees the gifts, God reveals the gifts.

Today especially we give thanks for the variety of gifts of the Spirit that makes us who we are. Today especially, as we all hear the Word of God, pray with one another, and share in Holy Communion, we celebrate our life together in this church.

What Shall We Call Today?

Text: Luke 3:15-17, 21-22
Other texts: Isaiah 43:1-7

Today, as you can see, is called the Baptism of Our Lord. But perhaps we should call it something else.

There is a lot of ink in the scholarly press about the baptism of Jesus. There is a lot of theological theorizing and worrying about it. Preachers are advised to preach today about the meaning of baptism, and of the relationship between baptism and the sinful life.

But in the Gospel of Luke, at least, baptism is not the main point. In fact, it is hardly a point at all. “Now when all the people were baptized,” it says, “and when Jesus also had been baptized and was praying, the heaven was opened.” There is a lot more going on here than the baptism of Jesus, which is mentioned only in passing.

To focus on this baptism in the life of Jesus is to miss an important part of Luke’s story of Jesus. Jesus is a person of the people. Throughout Luke, Jesus is allied with the poor and the oppressed. Jesus is poor. It is easy to imagine—and people do—to imagine Jesus standing in line with all the other people waiting for his turn. (Though it does not say so in the Bible, and who knows whether there were any lines). To emphasize unduly the moment of baptism is to spiritualize Jesus in a way that Luke would not have admired or intended.

It is hard to say how far we should take this thinking. Jesus was not the only one baptized. Was he the only one to hear the voice from heaven, which we assume to be God’s voice? You are my son, whom I love, God says. But does not God love all God’s sons and daughters? Does God love Jesus especially? Maybe God murmurs in the ears of all the newly baptized: I love you. You who were baptized as adults, how was it in the moment? Did you hear such a whisper?

No matter how or whether we answer these questions, it is clear that this particular event in the life of Jesus is a kind of inauguration. Plus a transfer of power. This event—and not only in Luke’s Gospel—marks the beginning of the ministry of Jesus. From this day forward he is Jesus whom the people follow, all in hope, some even to their deaths. And John fades to the background (in the verses we skipped, Herod puts him in jail).

How then, should we call this day?

Maybe we should call it the Call of Our Lord Sunday. We could compare the voice of God to Jesus embodied in the dove-like thing with the voice of God to Moses embodied in the burning bush. Luke often relates Jesus to Moses. Perhaps God’s message to Jesus was his call to ministry, as it was to Moses. The message to Jesus would then have been a loving invitation. An invitation coupled perhaps with a little arm twisting.

If this is a call to Jesus, was Jesus surprised? We think not, since we know the rest of the story, plus we have in our minds 2000 years of interpretation. But that is not how it unfolds in Luke. We just do not know. And if he was surprised, was it a pleasant surprise? How does Jesus, human Jesus, see his short, miraculous, homeless, and violence-touched life ahead of him? Is he eager or suspicious or reluctant though willing? Being called by God is a mixed bag more often than not. Ask any prophet.

Or maybe we should call it the Announcement to Our Lord Sunday. In Matthew and Mark, who also in other years have a thing to say about this event, this interchange with Jesus is more public. For them, it is a confirmation that Jesus, this particular man, has been singled out and everyone had better know it. In those Gospels, Jesus strangely has not much to do with it, other than to be an object of God’s remark.

But in Luke, it seems that only Jesus hears this particular communication. It is addressed directly to Jesus. Is this a secret between the two of them, father and son? Perhaps God here is preparing Jesus for the journey ahead. Or as God did Elijah, encouraging Jesus not to despair of hardship and the upcoming temptations which follow almost immediately. Or simply reminding Jesus who he is, a child of God, not alone.

Or maybe we should call it God Says I Love You Sunday. There are lots of ways to translate what God says to Jesus, and each Bible does it differently. We have our Bible: You are my son, the beloved; with you I am well pleased. Or the similar: you are my beloved son. Or the slightly more direct: My beloved son, in you I am well pleased. I like this one: In you I have found delight. Or this one, which is from the paraphrase Bible called the Message: You are my son, pride of my life. But I like best this one from the fairly rigorous translation of the NIV: You are my son, whom I love. Which is, after all, the point.

What is happening here is sheer grace. God is declaring God’s love for his child, Jesus. This is not a statement of approval or reward for past actions. It is not a statement laying out future conditions or expectations. It has nothing to do with anything that Jesus did or will do. It is a free offering of love of Jesus from God.

It is especially powerful after the off-putting hopes for unquenchable fire that we just heard from John. It echoes the first reading from Isaiah, in which God so beautifully says to Israel:

I have called you by name, you are mine. … I will be with you. … you are precious in my sight, … and I love you.

Today is a special day of celebration for this church. Today the four communities of faith that worship here in this building gather again to share a meal together. To give thanks together for all that God has provided us in this place. And to prepare for its future together.

One of the things we learn from the Bible is how God works. In the world and in our lives. There is no doubt that we all and each have been called here. The evidence surrounds you. No doubt some of us find that surprising and others are hardly surprised at all.

God has reminded us that we are God’s church, as all churches are, but not any less. God has issued us a loving invitation. We are inclined to accept.

We go forward now, remembering what we have always known: We are God’s children, precious in God’s sight, loved by God.

Light in Darkness

Text: Readings for Epiphany

A generation that has been traumatized by an event of human or natural suffering and destruction can sometimes only be healed by the next generation to come. The Israel that Isaiah describes was torn from its land and was exiled to Babylon. But later Persia freed the Israelites and allowed them to go home. The passage we heard from Isaiah comes from this period. It describes a time when the sons and daughters of Israel come home and comfort their parents with a joyful vision of what is to be.

The vision was a restored Jerusalem. Not only restored to its former glory, though there was that, too. But to be restored as a fitting people of God. The Israelites were God’s people. They had been given great gifts. The law and the promises which flowed into and from it were a guide to the right kind of life, a life which was in sync with God’s manner and intentions, which is what the word righteous means.

Israel was to be a light to the rest of the world—the nations, the gentiles. The light was a beacon—a marker of the kind of nation that was God’s nation—and an illumination—revealing God and God’s way. The world was a mess—as if it were covered with a thick darkness, as the world often seems to be. Israel was to be the model, an example to the world of the way all nations could be.

And now, says Isaiah, it will be so. Nations will come to your light, it says, and kings to the brightness of your dawn. But the radiance of Jerusalem was not the light of Israel, though. It was not owned by Israel, not inherent in its nationality. It was the radiance of God shining through and in the people of God.

What the other nations were drawn to see was not the power of Israel. Not its success and riches. Not the grandeur of its army. It was something else.

The kings of Israel were anointed by prophets and operated under the law of God. Psalm 72, which we just sang, is a prayer for an inauguration, the crowning of a new king. The prayer accomplishes three things. The prayer makes the king: it calls on God to empower the king to fulfill God’s intent. And it reminds the king of what that intent is. And it prepares a way to judge the king, in case the king should fail in remembering or in acting. As kings and leaders sometimes do.

The rulers of other lands would be drawn to Israel because of the way of life of the people that was embodied, as the psalm describes it, in the job description of the king. The king has three responsibilities: to ensure justice, righteousness, and peace.

Justice means that the poor are not neglected nor exploited by the rich. A just society is when things are even-handed, where the prosperity of some is shared with the needs of others. Justice is not fairness or equality (or retribution), but a force that restores right order and reconciles the needs and resources of all. The king defends the needy, the psalm says, rescues the poor, and crushes the oppressor, delivers those who cry out in distress and have no helper.

Righteousness means that the principles of the culture are lined up with the will of God. We’ve talked about this before. There is a way of God. Righteousness is not purity or strictness as much as it is an alignment of point of view, goals, and methods. It is more than doing what God says to do; it is being in sync with God and God’s creation.

And peace—shalom—is peace between nations and people, peace of mind, and also—as it is translated in one of the two times is appears here—is also prosperity. It is what we mean when we say “a time of peace.” Not just safety and defense, but a time without fear or anxiety. A kind of pervasive contentment.

Kings will come to Israel because it is governed in a way that ensures justice, righteousness, and peace. This is God’s call to Israel. And it is to us, who hear this same call from Jesus.

It is not surprising that Matthew borrows the images of these readings—foreign rulers bringing gold and frankincense, for example—to tell the story of the wise men who come to honor Jesus. The three kings, which is what we call them by tradition—Three Kings Day, and We Three Kings of Orient—though they are not kings and not three.

This day is properly called Epiphany, which means to be revealed or made known or make manifest. It is more completely called in some traditions the Manifestation of Christ to the Gentiles. This is helpful, because on this day we celebrate not only the appearance of Jesus in general, but his appearance in the midst of all the people of the world, not just a particular group.

You will have noticed that all the readings, even the one from Paul, talk about foreigners and strangers. It is important to Matthew that Jesus comes for the sake of all nations, not just Israel. Luke, who is especially concerned about the poor, has lowly shepherds greet the birth of Jesus. But Matthew puts there instead educated scientists—of a sort—from foreign lands. As it is with Paul, Jesus is a way for God’s grace to be made available to all sorts of people, even ones who do not expect him and who find him not in tradition or scripture or doctrine, but in other signs and pointers. And who perhaps end up not following him but go on by another road.

What is not different is that the light that shines in Jerusalem, according to Isaiah, and the light that shines in Christ through his teaching and his life is the same godly light. And in the same way it is a beacon and an illumination to all people.

The job of the king was to be the protector of justice, righteousness, and peace. Later, this job was delegated to all the people, and eventually through Christ it has become our job. It is given to us in baptism—may your light so shine before others. As with kings, we are not called to be recruiters, but we are called to act so that others may see God’s light.

The king’s charge is to, as the psalm says, be like refreshing rain upon the field, nourishing showers that water the earth. We have inherited that charge with this purpose: that justice, righteousness, and peace will prevail in all the world.

It is a joyful vision of what is to be.

Boy Jesus

Text: Luke 2:41-52

Perhaps, when Jesus and the scholars in the Temple were talking about scripture, they were talking about sea monsters.

In the Hebrew Bible that Jesus knew, there are a lot of sea monsters. As there are in psalm 148 which we just sang. And in Job: the Leviathan that God made for fun.

And other great stories: There are giants in Genesis and Deuteronomy, like King Og (which is a great name for a giant king).

There are battles won with courage, with bravery, with trickery, and with technology (like the one at Jericho). And there are stories of other remarkable twelve-year-old boys, like David, the shepherd who defeated another great giant and who turned out to be a king, or Samuel who was the first great prophet.

The Bible has some terrific stories for a young man or woman of Jesus’ age. Plus, that age is a time of real and intense wondering about God and how the heavens and the earth all fit together. It is not all that surprising that Jesus liked to spend time with the teachers in the Temple, talking about scripture and asking questions and listening to the answers.

This strange interlude on the First Sunday after Christmas falls in the lectionary between two birth stories: the first on Christmas Day with the shepherds and the manger and the second on Epiphany with the arrival of the three kings. So we jump in our readings from birth to emerging adult and back to birth.

This story about young man Jesus appears only in Luke. There is some thought (based on the words and writing style) that it might have been inserted into Luke from some other source. In many ways this story duplicates the one that appears in Luke just before it. That story, in which Jesus is still just a baby, happens in the Temple as this one does. People are amazed at his presence, just as in this one. His parents don’t get it, just as in this one. His mother Mary treasures in her heart the things she hears and sees, just as she does in this one. And in the end, the story notes that Jesus got older and wiser, just as this one does.

So, why is it here? There are other “Jesus as boy” writings, but in books which never made it into the canon of the Bible because of their questionable authority. The best known is called the Infancy Gospel of Thomas. In it Jesus does miraculous and sometimes not very nice things, things appropriate to a energetic, curious child who is a little unruly.

These stories are almost certainly written to help people fill in a not very complete picture of the person of Jesus. We know him from the birth stories in Luke and Matthew, and as an adult preacher, but nothing of the years between that in our own lives are so influential and revealing.

The purpose of these stories is not, as we sometimes suppose, to prove that Jesus as a boy was really God. It is rather the opposite: to show that Jesus whom we now know as God was really a boy. Did boy-things. Was 100% human even as divine, even when a young person.

In the story in Luke, Jesus amazes the teachers and confounds his parents. It does not take a divine child to do that. Twelve-year-old children are amazing no matter what. They are as able as young king David or young prophet Samuel. They know lots about many complicated things. They become geeks (even church geeks, like Jesus) or fledgling scholars or jocks—all at once. They read and remember like crazy. They have sophisticated ideas about things. They ask penetrating questions, as I’m sure Jesus did, and listen closely to the answers, and are good at finding bugs and flaws in arguments.

And they can be adventurous and unruly and as oblivious of their parents as Jesus was. And as mysterious to their parents as Jesus was to his. They did not understand him, it says. Others saw in him what his parents did not, as often happens.

What we celebrate in these stories is not the adult Jesus who is teacher and savior and divine presence among us. There are lots of other times to do that. What we celebrate is the child of promise that is in every human young man or woman. We see and treasure in our hearts the amazing present and potential future in these children. None of us know any more than Mary did for sure what will happen. But we expect and pray that every twelve-year-old, not just the divine son of God, will grow in years and, we hope, in wisdom and divine and human favor.

These stories remind us forcefully that Jesus was human as well as divine. It seems weird that we should have to do that. It would seem that we would be called more often to defend the divinity of Jesus, not his humanity. But Christians have long had a tendency to embrace the God side of “God incarnate” and to deny or evade the incarnate side. Early heresies made it as if Jesus were God in human clothing—or like Zeus, a god disguised as something else—and we sometimes speak and act even now as if that were how it worked. Lutherans can claim to be virtuous in this regard, being especially adamant about the 100% human, 100% God doctrine. But not so consistently that we can pat ourselves on the back about it.

There is in church jargon something called the “scandal of particularity.” What this means is that Jesus was not a general God-presence in the world but a particular person in a particular time born to a particular family. It was scandalous because how could the infinite God be in a finite person. He was a particular little baby, with round cheeks or not, bald or not, chubby or not, cranky or not. He was a particular twelve-year-old boy, doing twelve-year-old things, getting into trouble, knowing stuff, fighting (maybe) with his brothers, amazing his parents and astonishing his teachers in a particular way.

There is no scandal in particularity. All creatures, all humans are particular, individual, great and strange. If God is to be human, God must be, for us, a particular one.

It is important to our faith that we do not let Jesus become a God who is just a kind of divine, magical, privileged tourist in our foreign, human land. We need, and thankfully we have, a God who likes to read about sea monsters as much as likes to create them.

A Tough Kid, God Remembers

Text: Luke 1:39-55

The story of the Bible is the story of God. Not the whole story of God, which starts long before us, and ends long after us, and encompasses much more than we will ever know. But it is the part of God’s story that has to do with people on this earth. Can we tell a story of God that has nothing to do with us? Maybe. But maybe not. What we do affects God and changes God; we are part of God’s story. But can we tell our story without God in it? Probably not, being creatures of God; though we do try.

The story of the Bible is the story of God. The story of Jesus is, for us, a big part of that story. The story of the birth of Jesus is a high point in that story. But it is by no means the only point.

And for Luke, at the beginning of the story of Jesus is the story of Mary.

Mary was a tough kid from a rough neighborhood. Joseph, her fiancee, was a carpenter—not an admired craftsperson but low on the economic ladder, a rung below subsistence farmer. She was probably a young teenager, thirteen or fourteen years old. It was not a good time to be a Jew in Palestine. Roman soldiers walked the streets, crucifixion was common for minor crimes, like not knowing your place or talking out loud about a time when Israel would be restored to its former greatness. Or your hope for a messiah, a descendant of great King David, to rescue you.

We rightly celebrate what we see as Mary’s willingness to do God’s will in the matter of the birth of God into this world. But this is not a no-brainer for Mary. It is clear from the story that Gabriel’s announcement is really more like an invitation than a command. It is a mark of Mary’s character that she agrees: I am the Lord’s servant, Mary answers. May your word to me be fulfilled. And she sings a song, called Mary’s song, which we also call the Magnificat.

The miracle of Mary as mother of God is not that she was a virgin. In those days stories of virgin birth were a dime a dozen. The miracle was that God would choose someone with such low net worth in the currencies that mattered: property, heritage, gender, education, and age. The scandal of Mary was not about her virginity but about her lot in life and her political position. We see a poetic beauty in Mary’s story, but people of Jesus time found the whole thing to be, as one scholar said, just another reason to think that Christianity was bizarre. The only status she had in the world was, it turned out, her relationship with God. This would have been a big reason why her relative Elizabeth was so surprised.

Mary’s song starts with Mary. It is all about her at the start. Me, me, me; the word appears five times in the first four verses. Great things for me. All generations will call me blessed, and so forth. Really, this seems fair. Mary is as non-plussed as Elizabeth was and as future readers would be. But these verses are just joyful preamble.

Mary knows, as all prophets know, that calls like this rarely benefit the prophets. God’s choice of Mary does not stem from some special goodness in her, but rather from some special goodness in God. The world is about to change, and Mary has a part. But as a prophet, Mary knows that the going will not be easy. Even as young as she is, it seems to me that she understands that being the mother of Jesus will be hard and come to a difficult end. She answers the call out of courage.

God is using Mary to change the way things go. Something is out of kilter. The poor are hungry and the rich have much. The powerful abuse their power over the lowly. The poor are not poor because they are just unfortunate, victims for whom circumstance has not been kind. They are instead victims of ungodly acts of others. This was not God’s plan for things in the story of God and us. Prophets had condemned Israel for this before, and God had intervened before.

The hungry, the lowly, and the outcast are needy. They need something. For them, the world is broken. Things need fixing up, they need repair. The people need salvation, which means rescue and healing. The poor and lowly need a savior, someone to see that God’s plan is enacted.

The rich and powerful do not. They have no sufficient need to plead for help. They do not welcome the same savior as the poor. They are proud in the imagination of their hearts, says the King James version of the Bible. In their inmost thoughts, says another. In their haughty thinking of their hearts, say one more. This is not about their feelings; the heart was the center of thought. It is how they think. They think they do not need God or to do what God wishes. They give themselves credit. And they do not think that by oppressing and exploiting others they oppose God. Or they do not care. Either way, it’s an issue.

This imbalance between those who need much and those who have much is a central theme of Luke. As we have heard in the Gospel readings all Advent. And of the ministry of Jesus in general. And before that, of the law and the prophets. It runs through the story of God and us in the Bible.

It is political, for it is about power. But it is not revolutionary in itself. Luke is not hoping for the obliteration of one group of powerful, wealthy people to be replaced by some other group of people who then become powerful and wealthy. The hope is that the vertical becomes horizontal. The distinctions we make that allow the rich and the poor to have such different lives are not distinctions that God makes.

In Mary’s song God remembers God’s mercy, and recalls the promises made to God’s people. It is God’s memory that is being celebrated here. And justice is a part of God’s story and of God’s promise to God’s people. It is the prospect of broken justice repaired that is celebrated here.

We think of this song as a hopeful predictor of the future. Mary sings, we think, because she has high expectations for the child she will bear. But as someone mentioned in Bible study last week, the verbs are all past tense. This is a song about what God has already done. It is hopeful. It proves that our hopes are not foolish or bizarre, but grounded in the story of God and us up to now. God has been effective. We trust God will continue to be.

This song is the reading for this last Sunday in Advent because it anticipates the birth of Jesus. But Jesus is not even mentioned in Mary’s song at all. He appears only by reference discovered by the imaginations of our hearts. All the hopes of which Mary sings are met in the coming child. God continues to be with us.

Christians live under a promise of a new way of being. For some, that seems absurd, yet another reason to think Christianity to be bizarre. Things go on, and what has been is what will be. There may be hope, but to the cynical we are whistling in the dark. But it is part of the fabric of our faith, the plot of God’s story, to be naive enough to think that God has something in store for this world that will save it and will heal it.

Thanks be to God.

The Shame on Us Good News

Text: Luke 3:7-18

You brood of vipers! You sons and daughters of serpents! You children of snakes!

What kind of people would find these words to be good news? What kind of person would take the scolding that John gives them and interpret it as gospel? Who after hearing such reproaches would then turn to John for guidance?

Recognized as a prophet, imagined by some to be the savior of Israel, John draws huge crowds in the wilderness. He preached repentance, a change of direction; and he baptized people in the river. All sorts of people came to see and hear and be washed by him. Crowds of Jews and probably pagans, despised and cheating tax collectors, Roman soldiers enjoying the wicked privileges of an occupying army. All came to hear John.

By calling them children of vipers, John shames them. He makes them ashamed of themselves. John is not trying to create ill will among the crowd, within the people of the crowd. Instead, he is exposing what they already know. John is not creating a feeling in the people that they do not already have. He is naming an unpleasant conviction that they already hold but have forgotten, or have hidden, or are denying.

The people are ashamed because of what they have done and allowed to be done. Sorrows they have caused and injustices they have let happen. Injustices caused and sorrows they have not prevented. They should be ashamed. We should be ashamed. Shame on us that people starve. Shame on us that people have no place to live. Shame on us that people wage war. Shame on us that some have very much and some next to nothing. Shame on us for obscene violence.

Shame is not the same as guilt. Guilt is in the acts done or left undone, and the relief is in forgiveness. Guilt is the result of works. But shame is Sin with a capital “S.” Shame is about our being. It is how we are saints and sinners at the same time. Forgiven and shamefaced at the same time. We are forgiven our sins, but we remain sinners.

We can feel—or be—not guilty, innocent, and still feel shame for our group, institution, nation, or the world.

Guilt moves us to remorse and apology. Shame moves us to seek a new way of being. We confusingly use the one word, repentance, for both things. But the repentance that comes out of guilt is regret and the repentance that comes from shame is transformation.

The crowds do not apologize. Instead, they ask “What then, should we do?” It is revealing and important that they do not argue with John. They do not equivocate or explain or defend themselves. They do not mock his unreasonable idealism. Nor do they fall into despair or discouragement. They are ashamed. They know that John knows them. John has spied them out correctly. Their eagerness to know what to do now comes straight from their recognition that John is right. In that case, they ask, what shall we do? What, then—in that case, and in particular—what then shall we do?

John responds in the spirit of the question. His answers have nothing to do with feelings and nothing to do with belief. They have to do with what to do. There are three groups in the passage—perhaps standing for the large variety of sorts of people. And for each, John has a different answer. To the crowd: Be economically fair. If you have two coats, give one to a person who has none. To the tax collectors—who in these times ran a kind of protection racket: do not use your position of authority to rob from others. To the soldiers: do not use your threat of power to oppress the people and exploit their fear of you. John advises in favor of fairness, generosity, and humility and against injustice, greed, and dominance. But not in the general—which gets us nowhere; it is like saying “be good”—but in the specific.

Lutherans make the distinction between law and gospel. But this does not mean that the law—rules of behavior and ethics—are inferior to and superseded by the Gospel, or are trivial in light of God’s grace and forgiveness. There is good news in the law, and the law is useful. There are lots of exhortations and advice and commandments and teachings about behavior in the Bible and are part of our faith.

The law, things that tell us what is good to do, convict us. That is, they remind us that what we are doing is not always so great. In that way, they shame us as John’s words shamed the crowd. They discover us hiding behind ramparts of privilege and wealth, ancestry (“We have Abraham as our ancestor!” the crowd thinks), and also competence, good will and good intentions and fine gestures. All the things we use to duck from our shame. The law does not condemn these things—they are often a part of us—but it does treat them as beside the point. The laws reveal us inside the ramparts, which is both embarrassing and good.

And the law also keeps us attentive to other things and places and people of the world. If we are to share our second coat with people who have none, we have to seek and see those people. If we are to visit the prisoners—a kind of law Jesus mentions—then we have to find them. If we are to avoid cheating people, we have to see how what we do cheats them. We have to be aware of how things work and, in our world, how we are connected. The law is a pointer in the right direction.

The law tells us how to live good. It is a rudimentary but fundamental set of instructions. We need to know this stuff and pay attention to it.

The reason the crowd responds with eagerness and not with anger or dismay is that what John is saying is calling to them. That—a calling—is the root of the word “exhortation” in this passage. The people are ashamed. They—we—know this deeply. We are called to act, moved by what we already know deep within us and from the conscience of our traditions. We are given instructions, which are a gift to us.

These words are good news—gospel—not so much, or not only, because they are a summary of what John has just said. But because they are an introduction to the story about to unfold.

This expectation of a coming guide, a trustworthy companion, and an unfolding of a new world, is what makes Mary and the shepherds and the kings we are about to encounter in the next ten days so joyful. In times of trouble and shame, they represent a hope that we are at the beginning of a new way to live.