What Pastor Jon Preached on December 25th, 2009

The Nativity of Our Lord, Christmas Day

Isaiah 52:7-10 • Psalm 98 • Hebrews 1:1-4, (5-12) • John 1:1-14

^{23467891011121314}"In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was in the beginning with God. All things came into being through him, and without him not one thing came into being. What has come into being in him was life, and the life was the light of all people. The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness did not overcome it. There was a man sent from God, whose name was John. He came as a witness to testify to the light, so that all might believe through him. He himself was not the light, but he came to testify to the light. The true light, which enlightens everyone, was coming into the world. He was in the world, and the world came into being through him; yet the world did not know him. He came to what was his own, and his own people did not accept him. But to all who received him, who believed in his name, he gave power to become children of God, who were born, not of blood or of the will of the flesh or of the will of man, but of God. And the Word became flesh and lived among us, and we have seen his glory, the glory as of a father’s only son, full of grace and truth. "

Do you remember the first time you asked someone on a date? Even better, what about the first time you asked someone to go to the Homecoming dance? Perhaps you’ve asked someone you were just getting to know to do something fun together like go to a party or film. There’s that temptation, and fear racing through you as you pick up the phone, wondering, “is this person going to want to do this? Do they even know who I am? How can I still sound cool and relaxed, so they don’t know how nervous I really am?” That awkward asking out is indeed risky business!

Today, in our relationship with God, we receive a “homecoming” celebration invitation call from God that God has extended to us—only this dance has been happening for all of our lives. As awkward and fearful as it is to initate relationship with someone else—someone we don’t know—God doesn’t even let us pick up the phone to try and reach out to God. God has taken the initiative in Christ to invite us, today, to come home. We no longer have to keep striving, keep straining for God—God has come. The Word, Jesus has been made flesh and come to share a living and vibrant relationship with us.

Somehow, this relationship with God is unlike any other we’ve known. It’s as if because of Christ, God has known us all along—even though it may seem as if at many points in our lives, we have met God again for the first time. “He came to what was his own,” John’s Gospel says. (1:11) As much as we want to know God, as much as we hunger and long to be in relationship with God—it’s God who continually initiates the relationship between us. God always comes first to us—just as we come into being and into existence through God.

In sending Christ, in breathing Christ into the world, this Jesus, this ray of light that no darkness can overcome means that any and all of our attempts to relate to God are no longer initiated by us—but rather respond to God. Just as we cannot breathe out without breathing in, we cannot think or feel or act towards God without God already being and dwelling within us. Jesus who is born with flesh was sent by God to know us and it has made all the difference—we don’t have to initiate. All our lives, our whole selves are a response to God’s creative, intimate longing to love and accompany and mend everyone.

When it all is up to us; when we feel our calling out to God is like a shy request, and we don’t know how God will respond, our faith and our relationship with God falls flat. We dry up. We don’t even know how to begin to pray—we have no idea what to say to God! Our words become uninteresting and not personal from us. We can begin to wonder, does God remember who I am? Does god care about me at all? The content of faith can begin to know only the tools of pious words, soft voices and polite platitudes offered to God.

But...thankfully it all, all starts with God. “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God…’ (Jn 1:1) It all starts with God and Christ who knows God, with God who knows our hunger to know and experience God. God initiative in us resonates with us, it stirs with us what we long to feel. It stirs in us that God already knows us, and our desires and our longings. We already know God through prayers we have said and things we do that we didn’t even know were prayer. When we see our relationship with God as life lived in response to God, our lives have been re-framed, re-bordered by God’s own adoption of us. There is no part of ourselves, no part of our experience that cannot respond to God who lives in us. Our lives have been re-framed by the Word dwelling and holding so close and so tight to us—a hold that God sent to us first.

Prayer is our lifeline to God, but prayer is not initiated by us. In her book Praying with Body and Soul: A Way to Intimacy with God, Jane Vennard speaks of our prayer as something actually initiated by God, by the Word who has been made flesh. With our whole lives as prayers that respond to God, we cast aside the illusion that our relationship with God, our prayer life, happens only in what we say, in what we do, and only in secret, dark, private places… The birth of Christ connects our whole, entire beings back to God, because our whole beings and selves become God’s very own prayer that lives in us, that returns back to God. Prayer becomes an event not just when we set aside ten minutes in the morning, but with every action, every breath of our lives—while we cook, while we tend to our family, while we hear beautiful music, when we garden, when we are in nature—even our anger and frustration become part of our prayer to God. Lament will not stop God’s sending of Christ to us, nor from awakening our selves to a large, embodied, grounded, imaginative faith that’s free to shout and rage at God, question God, laugh and dance with God, to push God away and to choose God…and finally to fall in love with God all over again. And because Jesus has come among us…Because God’s already made it a reality….it’s so much easier to pray! God turns the prayer that is our lives from sacrifices into responses…for we’ve already received the invitation…God is already present. We can let our bellies hang out that God adopts us as one of God’s own.

In our celebrating today, we have been welcomed back home to Christ. We are all guests and Jesus has taken the risk to cross the threshold over to our side—so that all of us may live in covenant with god. We can offer up our celebrations that God has fulfilled this promise; we can also receive with thanks the initiative on God’s part that connects us back to our beginning, back to our selves and back to one another. God has taken the awkwardness out of our relationship—we can respond, for with Christ we have all been welcomed today to God’s own homecoming in us. Amen.

What Pastor Jon Preached on December 24th, 2009

The Nativity of Our Lord, Christmas Eve
Isaiah 9:2-7 • Titus 2:11-14 • Luke 2:1-14, (15-20)

"In those days a decree went out from Emperor Augustus that all the world should be registered. This was the first registration and was taken while Quirinius was governor of Syria. All went to their own towns to be registered. Joseph also went from the town of Nazareth in Galilee to Judea, to the city of David called Bethlehem, because he was descended from the house and family of David. He went to be registered with Mary, to whom he was engaged and who was expecting a child. While they were there, the time came for her to deliver her child. And she gave birth to her firstborn son and wrapped him in bands of cloth, and laid him in a manger, because there was no place for them in the inn.In that region there were shepherds living in the fields, keeping watch over their flock by night. Then an angel of the Lord stood before them, and the glory of the Lord shone around them, and they were terrified. But the angel said to them, 'Do not be afraid; for see—I am bringing you good news of great joy for all the people: to you is born this day in the city of David a Savior, who is the Messiah, the Lord. This will be a sign for you: you will find a child wrapped in bands of cloth and lying in a manger.' And suddenly there was with the angel a multitude of the heavenly host, praising God and saying, 'Glory to God in the highest heaven, and on earth peace among those whom he favors!' When the angels had left them and gone into heaven, the shepherds said to one another, 'Let us go now to Bethlehem and see this thing that has taken place, which the Lord has made known to us.' So they went with haste and found Mary and Joseph, and the child lying in the manger. When they saw this, they made known what had been told them about this child; and all who heard it were amazed at what the shepherds told them. But Mary treasured all these words and pondered them in her heart. The shepherds returned, glorifying and praising God for all they had heard and seen, as it had been told them."

^{23456791011121314151617181920} If you have ever been in Paris, perhaps you have been at the hotel where there is the sign that is posted, saying “Please leave your values at the front desk.

Or this sign from a hotel in Vienna: “In case of fire, do your utmost to alarm the hotel porter."

Here’s one from Athens: “Visitors are expected to complain at the office between the hours of 9-11am daily.”

And this one from Bucharest: “The [elevator] is being fixed for the next day. During that time we regret that you will be unbearable.”

When we think of hospitality as being “welcomed”, or of finally finding respite in our day…one of the places we tend to most often think of is a hotel. And even as much as hotels can be slick, can appear to be all neat and tidy, as much as they try to be places of coziness, of warmth, of safety and respite…than can often fall short and not get it quite right.

Yes, these foreign hotel signs were attempts to welcome. But they convey the brokenness of “hotel hospitality.” Truly Christian hospitality has in some ways been robbed by this polished and sanitized experience of the corporate hospitality “industry” as it is now even called. We have lost the meaning of truly radical welcome, when we push hospitality to the borders of something that is transacted between a paying customer and service-providing company—where guest and host have become roles taken only for those who can afford to pay to receive such services. (pause)

“And she gave birth to her first born son and wrapped him in bands of cloth, and laid him in a manger, because there was no place for them in the inn.” (Luke 2:7) Tonight we do not need to go anywhere, or translate any signs, or prepare anything to receive Christian hospitality: tonight God becomes the host, and we the guest, in God’s grandest act of welcome…in the birth of Christ as one of us.

But where is the hospitality in this story? The long and arduous search to find an inn where Mary and Joseph could stay comes to mind—but it is actually more folklore than actually from the Lucan narrative. The Greek word Luke actually uses for “inn” would be more closely translated as “guest room”, such as one attached to a house—rather than a hotel as we would understand it today. It’s not that Mary and Joseph could not find a hotel, they could not find anyone with an empty guest room because they were all filled with someone of a higher social status than them. They finally did find a place to stay, a guest room, where animals were staying too, because someone had heard of Joseph’s family since that was where his family originally came from. Jesus gets born in a guest room because there is no lower place for Mary and Joseph to go—this was the last possible place they could be for people of their poor social rank and peasant economic class.

It is no coincidence that God’s Son is born at the bottom. God becomes flesh at the bottom to bring dignity to the bottom; to welcome us who are all at the bottom, so that we may be given dignity, and glory. God tonight welcomes us as guests in becoming one of us, through Christ. In the least of all places, Christ lives this night as a guest on Earth who dwells to make us strangers to God no longer. In Christ God has broken the barrier of all barriers, the wall that will never again be raised—God throws lavish and intimate hospitality upon the whole world—because God has become human.

As one of us, God welcomes everyone into God’s gracious reign that brings up the lowly…that casts down the mighty.. and where every human being, every creature, becomes a sister and brother of the one made flesh. We are no longer strangers to God and we are no longer strangers to one another. The radical welcome of God becomes complete this night—in Christ, born at the bottom. Of all people, God turns a baby, the Christ-child—into the gracious host to all. Even the shepherds, who come to see in the flesh this amazing incarnation—it is not they who host Christ but the small infant boy who when they come to see him—he becomes their host.

And so we this night, we who long for the “perfect” Christmas, who may long for the pristine welcome we could find if we only could find the inn, the right hotel, we have been invited into this room, which God tonight makes into God’s own guest room. God turns this place and all places into dwellings where hospitality can happen—where no one is an outsider, where we do not need to be professionals, where it does not have to be pristine to share the welcome of God. There is no payment necessary to share the news with everyone we welcome the goodness of God’s opening up to us a welcome all can receive.

And God’s welcome goes even further—it goes beyond Jesus turning all places into dwelling places of hospitality. God’s turns us all into family—the Jesus family. This is a family where much more than blood unites us—it is the gracious host, God with us, Jesus who from the bottom brings us together and allows everyone to experience the first-class welcome of God’s choice of a dwelling place as among mortals.

Welcome to the Jesus-family. No hotel required. No payment required. There’s always a meal for you, and the waters are always refreshing. Come, let us take the guest room that can be moved anywhere, and join in the work of blessing the places God’s welcome is visible and of extending God’s hospitality to every dwelling place and to every human heart, so that all may sing of God’s glory from the very bottom, all the way up to the highest heaven. Amen.

What Pastor Jon Preached on Sunday, December 20th, 2009

4th Sunday of Advent
Micah 5:2-5a • Hebrews 10:5-10 • Luke 1:39-45, (46-55)

"In those days Mary set out and went with haste to a Judean town in the hill country, ⁴⁰where she entered the house of Zechariah and greeted Elizabeth. ⁴¹When Elizabeth heard Mary’s greeting, the child leaped in her womb. And Elizabeth was filled with the Holy Spirit ⁴²and exclaimed with a loud cry, 'Blessed are you among women, and blessed is the fruit of your womb. ⁴³And why has this happened to me, that the mother of my Lord comes to me? ⁴⁴For as soon as I heard the sound of your greeting, the child in my womb leaped for joy. ⁴⁵And blessed is she who believed that there would be a fulfillment of what was spoken to her by the Lord.' ⁴⁶And Mary said, 'My soul magnifies the Lord, ⁴⁷and my spirit rejoices in God my Savior, ⁴⁸for he has looked with favor on the lowliness of his servant. Surely, from now on all generations will call me blessed; ⁴⁹for the Mighty One has done great things for me, and holy is his name. ⁵⁰His mercy is for those who fear him from generation to generation. ⁵¹He has shown strength with his arm; he has scattered the proud in the thoughts of their hearts. ⁵²He has brought down the powerful from their thrones, and lifted up the lowly; ⁵³he has filled the hungry with good things, and sent the rich away empty. ⁵⁴He has helped his servant Israel, in remembrance of his mercy, ⁵⁵according to the promise he made to our ancestors, to Abraham and to his descendants forever.'"

The excitement was too much to keep in. All by herself, it had to be let out. Looking around, who would understand? Whom could this good news be shared with?

Luke’s Gospel says that Mary “went with haste” (1:39) to tell Elizabeth about God’s creation of the Messiah in her just as soon as the angel Gabriel had left her. God was with her…her of all people! And God would bear God’s own Son in her. Elizabeth, she would know…she would get how big this news was.

Have you been you blessed with a promised event, a circumstance, a big date, or another big day to look forward to that you were so, so excited about, it was impossible to sit and wait for it to come? Whether it’s a graduation date, a party, the paying off of a loan, a really big trip, or like Elizabeth and Mary, the birth of a child, there’s this sense of anticipation…of knowing that something really big, something really good is going to happen…but the long wait for it to come can almost seem unbearable.

As much as we may be ready for Christmas, it is a big, big day, when something really really good happens…but it’s not here yet. There’s still today and four more days to Christmas Eve. Why not celebrate Christ’s arrival already? Why wait any longer? The thing is that we do have something besides Christ’s arrival to celebrate right now, today, and it’s not what we think it is….we get to celebrate the anticipation, the expectation of God’s promise—a promise that hasn’t arrived yet—but a promise that we still know is on the way! The promise of a blessing in Christ is so rich, so great that it even blesses us now…even in the waiting, even in the wondering of what God’s revelation among us will exactly look like. God blesses us now, today, even though we know that Christ is what’s coming!

God’s covenant blessing doesn’t just mean that we give God praise when God follows through with the appearance of Jesus. We can give God praise even now…in advance of what blessings God will bring to fruition….not just that God will reveal Jesus, but that God fulfills the promises of covenant love and forgiveness in our lives even now. God’s coming advent, not yet seen in Christ, gives us pause to praise because Jesus has been promised as a blessing…This is a promise God foretold of with Abraham, a promise of blessing his descendents so that the whole world would be blessed. God extends that promise to Elizabeth, and to Mary, and ultimately through Jesus. Even though God in flesh has not yet appeared…we can shout with a loud cry with Elizabeth; we can sing with loud praise with Mary, we can pray a fervent prayer that yes, God’s blessings fill us even now with the Holy Spirit.

Elizabeth and Mary both grasp this present expectation for what God will do in their encounter with one another as pregnant mothers. Their unborn children have not been made visible, but yet they are the very much alive promised ones of God, stirring within. This encounter between Elizabeth and Mary has that giddy-like quality you would expect two cousins to have when they share that they are going to have babies. But their joy, their enlivened Spirit and their magnified faith do not rejoice primarily anticipating what they will do, but rather what God has already done in them, what God is doing in them and what God will do through them. God, in Elizabeth’s old age, awakened her barren and frail womb to life with a son, John, who would pave the way for Jesus and announce God’s forgiveness and righteousness through him. God, in Mary’s young age, in her unmarried status, stirred up in her the work of holy grace that would bear the fruit of God made real and concrete in a holy child.

Elizabeth and Mary model for us today the praise we can give to God in anticipation and also in thanks for the blessing God has, is and will weave and sow in them and in us as we encounter one another. Elizabeth, seeing Mary, her cousin, blesses her, and blesses Jesus, still unborn and of no particular significance yet. Even John, still unborn within Elizabeth, praises Jesus in anticipation of his reign with a dance of joy inside of Elizabeth. John is still unborn but very alive to God’s presence and promise of doing wondrous things. Elizabeth does not just see Mary, she sees God standing before her, who is and who will prepare a body will embody who God is and who God desires to be for all Creation.

And Mary, her words of Elizabeth speak so powerfully and mightily of what God has done, of what God is doing and what God will do. As she marvels with Elizabeth at the blessing work God can do even for them, Mary even has the audacity to speak as if God has already birthed and revealed Jesus to the world—as if it has already happened! She says, “for God has looked with favor on the lowliness of God’s servant…” (3:48) This not only proclaims what God did in choosing a lowly peasant woman to bear God within her, but also testifies with amazing trust of what Jesus will do. It indeed is a blessing right now brothers and sisters, to know that God in Christ has, is and will look upon all the lowly, all the humiliated, all without honor or without power and see them—and see us—favorably! That is a promise that is a blessing not for heaven, not for Christmas, not for some unknown future point, but today…now.

As we anticipate, God already blesses us this day. But God does not do this amazing blessing work…God does not show strength in lifting up the lowly, God does not promise to reveal a Son to us for such a blessing to be between us and God alone. Bono, the lead singer of the Irish rock band U2--who is an outspoken advocate for the world’s poor and sick…and someone who has often seen God up to the work of blessing more out in the world than inside the church…--Bono laments that the church can often turns into what he calls “bless-me clubs.” The blessings we celebrate, we anticipate today…they can turn us inward and focus on ourselves…can make us think we know who the high and mighty are whom God brings down…and that we ourselves are the lowly ones whom God lifts up. But God “blesses not just the ones who kneel” (“City of Blinding Lights”, from How to Dismantle an Atomic Bomb, by U2), but God blesses the cries of people like Elizabeth and like Mary, the cries of the world’s poor, the cries of those who face despair, the cries of those who know shame, who know lowiness, who know no way out.

As we receive the blessings of this present day, and as we anticipate the future blessings of our souls in the advent of Jesus, as we magnify God who turns the world upside down, God empowers and frees us all to turn our eyes not just up in praise to God…but out. God empowers United Lutheran Church to look out, look forward, look beyond and be blessed today in anticipation that we know God has, is and will bless the whole world through this church! God turns our eyes not just on ourselves, not just in the church, but out, to share the praise and affirmation God gives to Elizabeth and to Mary, to share the favor of God. God blesses us with anticipation that those cries of world’s despair will turn to words of thanks like Elizabeth, songs like Mary’s, they will turn to dances like John’s, and they will turn the church into a flock of blessed blessers. Thanks be to God. Amen.