Sermons

A couple of weeks ago, Tracy and I led a women’s retreat for the church up in Racine, Wisconsin.  Thirty of our women made a real sacrifice and put their lives on hold for a day to gather there.  In the very first moment, I announced our two goals.  First, we wanted everyone to get to know each other better.  In part, the retreat was about creating and renewing connections, connections that will be crucial in the transition days ahead for our church family.

So far during Epiphany, we have tracked Matthew’s account of Jesus’ earliest days (wise men, the flight to Egypt, the return to Israel and settling in Nazareth) and Luke’s account (the family following the cultural and religious customs and the surprising things that occurred with unexpected people.) The accounts are fundamentally different.  However, they each serve as prologues for the Gospel’s to come.  Knowing that their audiences are aware of things that happened in Jesus’ ministry, both Matthew and Luke say to their audiences, “Look…those things were already happening.”

Thirty years ago, when I started here, the church was stuck with me.  If you needed a pastor, I was your only option.  So, when Kitty Kuhlman died a few weeks after I started, I led her memorial service.  I’m sure some long term members were shaking their heads and thinking to themselves, “Well, this ought to be interesting…”. Maybe some of those same people, after the service, thought to themselves, “You know…that was okay.”  You have to start somewhere, right?

One of the biggest struggles for people at the end of Jesus’ ministry was that, in so many ways, he wasn’t what people expected.  (After all, isn’t it God’s job to do what we expect God to do?). Jesus wasn’t a trained rabbi or a religious authority.  In fact, he was in trouble with those people from the start.  Most people who heard him didn’t follow him.  He ended up in trouble with the law.  His “case” was reviewed by a host of authorities.  And, when given the chance, the crowd—the people who were right there looking at him with their own two eyes—rejected him and chose, instead to free a common criminal—Barabus.  The people expected a great king, a charismatic leader, someone who would make the nation great again.  What kind of Messiah is that?

When Jesus is crucified in the Gospel of Matthew, the Roman soldiers put a plaque above his head that reads, “King of the Jews.” During Holy Week, we may note this in passing. There’s so much going on. Earlier that week, Pilate accuses Jesus of claiming to be the “King of the Jews,” himself.  Again, mostly, the reference tends to fly right past us.  This morning, though, I want to pause and put this accusation in context.  According to Matthew, who were the Magi looking for when they got to Herod’s court?  They were asking for the newborn King of the Jews.  That question was enough to drive Herod crazy. 

I had a professor in college, Dr. Gerry Thorson, who was a sacred person in my life and a key figure in my growth as a thinker.  Dr. Thorson was an English professor who loved 19th and 20th century American literature.  Over a number of courses, we moved from the literature of a very agrarian America—people like Willa Cather and Ole Rolvaag—to the literature of the great wars—William Styron and the like.  He was an unassuming presence in class—humble and smiling most of the time, but in his own subtle way, he helped us not only become readers but grow as writers, ourselves.

Have you ever had an epiphany? An epiphany is a sudden insight into the nature of something, usually in a simple and striking way.  What I discover as true has been true all along.  What makes my discovery an epiphany is that all of a sudden, I “get it.”  “Wow,” I think to myself, “how did I not see that before?”

This morning, I would like to amplify a few of the things that I mentioned in the children’s time on Christmas Eve.  My hope is that in doing so, we can spend a few moments looking forward to the year before us with a sense of acceptance and maybe even a sense of direction.  There are so many unknowns and so many things over which we have no control.  This morning, we need to do a little inventory of what we do know and of the choices we can make.

Two weeks ago, I looked at the first of two couples who are essential in telling the Advent story:  Zachariah and Elizabeth, the parents of John the Baptist.  Like several other crucial couples in the Bible, they were unable to have a child.  They were faithful people so this wasn’t some “divine punishment.” Luke goes out of his way to tell us this. Our deepest longings sometimes go unfulfilled.  Zachariah and Elizabeth accepted this and moved on with their lives. This is what really faithful people do.

Here is a popular notion that I don’t buy: “Life is fair and God is in charge of making sure it stays that way.”  The underlying conviction is that people get what they deserve.  If you do good things, good things will happen to you.  If you do bad things, you will be punished.  God keeps the score.  It’s not that God wants to punish you…but God will…to teach you a lesson, to get you to be better, to get you to change your ways.  It’s not that God wants to punish you.  It’s more like God is that reluctant parent who looks at you and whispers, “Now, look what you’ve made me do…”

Most Christians spend a lot more time thinking about Jesus than we spend thinking about John the Baptist.  We remember John when Jesus is baptized, get a little taken aback by his appearance and his diet, and move on.  After all, we know who the main character of the story is:  Jesus of Nazareth.  If anything, we move out into the wilderness with Jesus and, glancing over our shoulders, we think, “Well…that guy was a character.  Kind of weird though.”

The story of our earliest ancestors in faith is a story of liberation.  They had been slaves for generations.  Across generations, they had become very good at one thing:  making bricks, the basic building blocks that the Egyptians needed.  It wasn’t that other people couldn’t have made them, too.  Bricks are not fine art.  However, these people had made them for so long and their bricks were so reliable.  Why change a good thing?