Sunday, December 06, 2009
Get Ready! God calls us to choose the path of peace
Kyle Wetherald
Today was the second time I preached at PMC. Here’s a little glimpse of what I said.
We’re taking a break from the book of Acts sermon series for Advent. Yet we haven’t traveled too far away because the Lectionary puts us in Luke, which has the same author as Acts. Last week John talked about how much fear and foreboding there is in the world and how necessary it is for us to continue living and let God be God. This week, we see the birth of the person of John the Baptist, who is given the task of preparing the way for Jesus.
During advent the church focuses on the idea of waiting for the child to come. In doing so, we focus on the first couple chapters of the gospels where we can read about the miraculous things God does in the conception of some holy babies. (I love that the first image of the savior is a baby…)
It is a little strange that John is first. The first 25 verses don’t really indicate what the lord coming is going to look like. It could easily have been mistaken that Zechariah’s son was going to be the savior. After all, Being fully Jewish, mothers always hoped that their child was going to be the messiah. Even if that’s not true, its obvious that John is an important part of this story.
This importance is shown in his parents:
Zechariah is a righteous person
• He and Elizabeth both descended from Aaron.
• It was a time of high piety for him:
o Served in Temple 2x per year as a priest
o Once in a lifetime occurrence to burn incense in the holy place (chosen by lot)
• The angel says his prayers are answered:
o Old, so probably given up on having a child
o Probably praying for deliverance for his nation instead.
o Makes his doubt seem natural
The story continues: All showing that John is like a mini maglight that points the way to the bright sunshine light that is Jesus:
• After Johns annunciation, comes the annunciation of Jesus to Mary.
o Where Zechariah had doubt, Mary didn’t because she heard what happened with Elizabeth and knew that miraculous conception could happen
• Then the mothers meet up for a little bit.
o Fetus John is animate for the first time, only when Fetus Jesus is in the vicinity.
• Then after the mothers are apart again, John is born. Then Jesus is born. Guess which birth narrative gets more verses…
While I was working on this sermon this week Ken told me to make the story more exciting, so According to the gospel of Ken, “Tony the Italian angel gave Zechariah a pizza for half price then told him to name the baby Juan.”
Seriously, though, the Angle of the Lord told Zechariah to name the kid John, which means, “Jehovah is a gracious giver”
But when everyone was crowded around and asking what the name of the baby was, Elizabeth told them “John,” they didn’t believe her, because that didn’t follow the custom that he should be named after someone in the family.
So in this context, with everyone in disbelief of the chosen name, that they turn to Zechariah, and he writes in the tablet, “His name is John.”
Now that’s obedience. At first he doubted. Then after the miracle baby-making happened, he went against what everyone thought he should do– against society’s traditions, against the crowd of people, even against his family.
But to the story of Advent, the disobedience to everyone else and the consequent obedience to God is so important.
Zechariah finally understands the reason for importance in The Benedictus (the main scripture of the day).
He can finally speak, and he does so almost prophetically and in song. God has done something amazing! He has “Raised a horn of salvation!” People will be saved!
There’s a blog that I follow on my iGoogle homepage that has a new ‘awesome thing’ every weekday. The dude is working toward a thousand of these awesome things. Naturally, the site is called “1000 Awesome things.” The guy (I think his name is Niel) always describes the situation around the awesome thing with funny, nostalgic language and then puts the exclamation on the end. AWESOME!
This moment, for Zechariah must have been the ultimate “AWESOME!” thing.
And he has big plans for his kid:
“And you, my child, will be called a prophet of the Most High;
for you will go on before the Lord to prepare the way for him,
to give his people the knowledge of salvation
through the forgiveness of their sins,
because of the tender mercy of our God,
by which the rising sun will come to us from heaven
to shine on those living in darkness
and in the shadow of death,
to guide our feet into the path of peace.”
There are two phrases in this pericope that I want to focus on:
1. “prepare the way”
2. “guide our feet into the path of peace”
1. “Prepare the way”
In order to understand the implications of John the Baptist “preparing the way,” I think it necessary for us to understand just what he’s getting people ready for.
I was listening to a podcast by Rob Bell the other day about Jesus probably being dubbed a “mamzer,” which is like the Jewish name for an illegitimate child. Essentially a mamzer is the resulting child of forbidden sexual contact. If a father made love to his daughter, or a brother to his sister, the resulting child would be a mamzer. Also, if someone has sexual relations with someone other than who they are betrothed to, the child is mamzer. Mary was betrothed to Joseph. Joseph wasn’t sexually active with Mary yet. Even if Mary and Joseph knew that there was divine intervention there, even if Elizabeth and Zechariah knew and believed, even if you and I have faith in miraculous conception, Mary being pregnant looked really bad. There’s even lines in the Talmud that claim that the mother of Yeshu was either raped by or voluntarily slept with Pandeira, a Greek or Roman soldier…
Yikes!
And there were HUGE social implications that came along with being a mamzer:
• not allowed to marry someone jewish
• any of their offspring get the same stigma placed on them
• Mamzerim were prohibited from entering the Temple.
• They were not allowed to be taught Torah.
• A mamzer’s house and grave were painted white to point him out, even in death.
This is like barely a step up from being a leper.
So in preparing the way (remember that’s what I’m focusing on) for Jesus, John was getting people ready for the world to be saved by a mamzer.
This makes sense, though, right? When Mary and Joseph roll into Bethlehem, the people there- jewish people that pride themselves in hospitality—don’t have any room for the lady that’s already bursting at the seams… Then through his life, Jesus got bad treatment a lot, and he’d always hang out with lepers and whores and other social outcasts.
It’s almost as though Jesus was no longer a human. Jesus wasn’t Jesus. Jesus was mamzer.
This knowledge makes the second part “Guide our feet on the path of peace” so much more intense
2. Jesus will be the rising sun that guides our feet on the path of Peace.
Peace. Tranquility. Harmony. Concord. Shalom—an order of creation where everyone feels valuable and everyone can live together—even the mamzers.
Jesus, who had this incredible social stigma was going to teach the world to live in peace even with the mamzers and the lepers and the whores. Everyone has value.
I know that the world then needed direction in this peace, but I think our world today needs that guiding light just as much.
One way that my fiancée has convicted me lately is in the way that I deal with the issues surrounding the Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender community. Andrea is very comfortable saying that she is an ally to the LGBT community and that she will fight for their rights. I’m not so comfortable with that, and when I was talking to her about this very issue, I told her that I’m afraid of being an LGBT ally because I don’t know what people would say about me—society, my church, my friends, my family.
As I was making this confession, she stopped me and said, “Kyle, do you realize what you’re saying sounds like it’s right out of scripture?” My heart sank when I realized she was right. Zechariah went against his family and society to obey God and name the kid John. I’d be too afraid to do that.
I don’t bring up this issue because I want to turn this sermon into a sermon on homosexuality or to start a big argument about what’s right or wrong or sinful or holy or blessed or cursed. In fact I want to do just the opposite. I bring this issue up because I feel like it is a perfect example of how much the world needs God’s guiding light toward peace.
It seems that in this issue both sides frequently have such a strong desire to be “right” that they’re willing to dehumanize their perceived enemies in the argument. If someone is pro gay-rights, they’re no longer George or Henrietta, They’re “liberal.” When someone says that they don’t agree with homosexuality, they’re seen as “Homo-phobe” and no longer as Randy and Katrina. Worst of all, if someone comes out, their identity is instantly associated with their sexual orientation and any value they otherwise had is somehow forgotten.
Where is the love in the name-calling? Where is the peace in telling each other, “You’re wrong!” Where is the reconsiliation in insisting that we’re right no matter the cost of others’ value.
In an essay I had to read for a class at Bluffton, Rowan Williams, the Anglican archbishop of Canterbury, wrote what I think is a simple, but profound way for us to walk in the path of peace.
The essay was about how we make ethical decisions. Often we feel like we can make decisions on our own, much like we decide which cereal to buy at the grocery store. We look for the cereal that will be the healthiest and tastiest or easiest on our budget. Williams talked about how Christian decisions cannot be made in that bubble. Ethical choices are never made alone because the person we are is shaped by the people around us and the people that came before us. For that reason when we make decisions, we need to make sure we’re dealing with each other lovingly.
The example he uses is one of wmd’s: He writes about how he believes “it is impossible for a christian to tolerate, let alone bless or defend, the manufacture and retention of weapons of mass destruction by any political authority.”
But he says this knowing that there are devout Christians that do indeed support wmd’s: He writes, “But these are the people I met at the Lord’s table; I know they hear the scriptures I hear, and I am aware that they offer their discernment as a gift to the Body.”
In the end, that’s the tricky thing about ecumenical encounters– staying true to ourselves but being willing to hear the other perspective. Williams says that it requires “staying alongside: which implies that the most profound service we can do for each other is point to Christ; to turn from our confrontation in silence to the Christ we all try to look at; to say to one another, from time to time, hopefully and gently, ‘Do you see that? This is how I see him: can you see too?’”
But the only way we’ll ever be able to ‘see it too’ is if we are willing to bend and try to put ourselves in each others’ shoes and look at life from a different angle.
I got this lamp in a gift exchange, and I must say that it’s one of the creepiest things I own because no matter where you’re at in the room, Jesus is making eye contact with you. My fiancée made an observation once that fits so well with Rowan Williams ideas. She said that when there’s more than one person in the room looking at Jesus, they’re both experiencing that creepy eye-contact. Even though they’re looking at Christ from two completely different angles, they’re still looking at the same Christ and having the same connection. But the only way we’ll ever know that we can still have the creepy eye contact is if we walk to where they’re standing.
This is how I see Christ. Can you see too?
Ultimately, we need to deal with each other in love. We need to let Love be Lord.
One of Andrea and I’s favorite hymns is My Life flows on, where we sing, “If love is lord of Heaven and Earth, How can I keep from singing?”
If love is Lord of heaven and Earth, then mamzers would feel valuable.
If Love is Lord of Heaven and Earth, then there would be no “liberals” or “Homo-phobes” or people that are only identified by their sexuality, but brothers and sisters in Christ.
If Love is Lord of Heaven and Earth, then we will walk the path of Peace together.
Because Love is Lord of Heaven and Earth, Zechariah can’t help but sing, “Praise be to the Lord, the God of Israel, because he has come and has redeemed his people!”
A week or two ago John gave a quote that went something like “If the world we imagine is ever going to exist, we must live like the world we imagine already exists.” Do we believe that Love is Lord of Heaven and Earth?
Well if we do, we’d better get ready! God is calling us to walk the path of peace.