Sunday, December 25, 2011

Sermon for Christmas Day


Son of God, light that shines in the dark,
            child of joy and peace,
            help us to open our eyes to you,
            and be born anew this day.  Amen.


Christmas Day,
and the Gospel is what is called the Prologue of John,
            the first 18 verses of John’s Gospel.

This is the Gospel from the third set of readings
                                                                        that can be read on Christmas Day,
and it is also the Gospel for the first Sunday after Christmas Day,
as well as showing up 6 times
            as the assigned reading in the Daily Office lectionary!
So you can get the idea of its significance just from the frequency of its use.

On Christmas Eve we are absorbed in the Christmas story from Luke 2,
            and attention often is more focused on Mary and Joseph,
                        on shepherds and angels,
            that we can miss Jesus,
so this Christmas gospel reading shifts the focus back to Jesus.

The first chapter of the gospel of John
has been very significant for me personally
            in my own understanding of who Jesus is
            and all the reasons I feel such love for him
            and am devoted to him as teacher, savior, Lord, Truth, and Life itself.

It is a passage in which I am always finding new depths,
and about which I could easily spend an hour or more preaching on,
although I will spare you that today.

For the last several months I have been teaching a course on
            Meditation and the Gospel of John.
I think we spent three weeks on this first chapter,
and about every session I make some reference back to the Prologue
            and these 18 verses.

In this profound passage is the heart of the mystery of our faith
            in regards to creation, incarnation, death, resurrection, salvation, and                                                                                                                                     life in Christ.
We are told in this passage how everything has been taken care of.

In the beginning…
in the words of Genesis 1:1…
in the beginning, the origin, the source…at the source of it all
            there is always God, the Divine Self,
and this Divine Self is continually expressing, giving expression, creating.
The beginning or origin point, the source is always present here and now,
            as creation continually comes into being.
You see, God did not just create at some temporal beginning point
            and then leave it all to evolve on its own.
Creation is continuing to happen moment by moment,
                                    continuous Divine Self-expression.
            Is it not self-evident?

The whole passage then becomes more and more rhapsodic
            about the lo/gos, the Word, becoming flesh,
that is, entering into the created order,
            a one-time begetting by the Father,
so that all living beings, all of us can see for ourselves
            the glory, the richness,
            the weightiness of abundance, honor and splendor,
the fullness of one grace after another
            showered upon us,
            revealing to us the very essence of God manifested in this Only-Begotten.

In the whole passage the only thing we have to attend to
            is receiving, owning for ourselves,
            what has been provided for us –
                        our adoption as children of God.

The adoption done for us is what brings us into union with God through Jesus.
The Resurrection Spirit of Jesus fills us,
            envelopes us,
            swallows us up,
and we live and breath and have our being within the Heart of Christ.

All we have to do is receive, take the Word, lay our hands on
            the lo/gos, the Life, the Light,
                                    by having faith in his Name.

Verse 12: “As many as received him, who believe in his name,
            to them he gives power to become children of God.”

Faith is a participation in the creative power of God,
            the ability of God’s creativity in us.
Faith is fundamental and essential to our being human;
                        we are beings of faith.

But it is God who empowers faith in us;
            there is a huge potency of faith in us.
And Jesus is the One who lived that potency of faith as light for us all.

 “As many as received him, who have faith in his name,
            to them he gives power to become children of God.”

Finally the Name is revealed in the 17th verse: Jesus, in Hebrew: Yeshua,
            the Name that means salvation, to deliver, to make wide, spacious,
to be or live in abundance, freedom, liberty.

The Name Jesus, as we are graced to experience it,
incorporates within it tremendous depth.

You see, adoption into the family of God is only the beginning.
There are the benefits of adoption
                        – salvation, resurrection life, union with God –
but there is also the rest of what goes with
            belonging to a family when one is adopted:
the obligations and the way of life and the work of the family.

And – note this –
the work is the same work that Jesus had to do – the will of the Father.
The way of life is the same as the way Jesus walked – the way of the Cross.
Discipleship is the way of life in this family for those adopted into it.

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.

Glory, that is, expansive presence, radiance of life potency,
            that which is primary in importance and of greatest worth.
Full of grace and truth
            Grace – the spontaneous flow of unbounded generosity,
                        the very nature of divine creativity
            and Truth – actuality, what is finally and fundamentally real.

Jesus the Word, full of grace and truth,
            whose whole being expresses the very nature of divine creativity,
            who is Living Truth.

The whole passage, the Prologue of John, is about the primacy of Jesus,
and that who he is, we also are meant to become,
            to actualize,
            to act the way we truly are, God-begotten.

So the context for our life together at Emmanuel
            is faith awakening and ever burgeoning within us,
                                    as light shining in the darkness
            as ever increasing awareness of who and what we are.

Coming to see this,
coming to greater understanding of this,
coming to grips with this
            is the spiritual work before each of us.

This then is the full implication of the meaning
            of the Incarnation and Nativity
                                    coming upon us.

Merry Christmas!

Sunday, December 4, 2011

Sermon for Advent 2, Emmanuel, Mercer Island


Merciful God,
who sent your messengers the prophets
to preach repentance and prepare the way for our salvation:
Give us grace to heed their warnings and forsake our sins,
that we may greet with joy the appearing of Jesus our Redeemer.  Amen.


Do you remember what Hunt preached last week? Perhaps not a fair question.
It was a sermon addressing issues of grief and suffering
            that frequently are in the back drop, if not the foreground
                        of our preparations for Christmas,
            and the compassionate comfort of Advent hope and expectations.

Today we have another message of comfort
            but with a different focus on the bleakness of the human condition.
It is the theme of repentance and forsaking our sins,
                        which, you have to admit, has been a perennial Advent theme.
Typically for us, however, we may repent and feel remorse,
            but in all truth we rarely forsake our sins.
Sins, the common every day variety sins,
            tend to become embedded into habit patterns
                        which are doomed to be repeated.

The kinds of sins I am thinking about here are not the text book sins,
            like theft, murder and adultery,
but the more endemic, flying under the radar, kinds of sin,
            so that without thinking we once again put our foot in it:
for instance, all the ways we subtly put down others,
            diminishing them to make ourselves look better,
                        often without our even realizing what we just did;
            or being indifferent to another’s needs,
            or persisting in behavior that isolates us from others,
            or showing our lack of faith in God
                        by trying to make ourselves good enough all on our own
                        so as not to need being saved, thank you very much.
Such is the spiritual condition of humanity,
            and the scripture lessons for today address that.
Sin makes deserts out of our lives.

We have three readings from three prophets,
            each with their message of repentance and preparing the way for salvation:
                        Isaiah,
                        Peter, writing in a prophetic manner in his second epistle,                                       and John the Baptist.
In the collect for today we asked God to give us grace to heed their warnings,
            so … let’s do that.

Isaiah, chapter 40:  God is speaking comfort to a people decimated by defeat,
            by the destruction of the center of their religion – the Temple,
            and by exile.
“Comfort, O comfort my people, says your God.
Speak tenderly to Jerusalem, and cry to her
that she has served her term, that her penalty is paid,
that she has received from the Lord's hand double for all her sins.”
Now that is all over.
Now it is the time to prepare the way for salvation.
And a voice cries out in the wilderness,
            in the desert, in the decimated place, the barren place:
Make a straight highway for our God.
Remove every obstacle, no depth, no height, no rocky uneven ground.
God comes. 
And God’s glory shall be revealed.  It will be all glory. 
And all people shall see it together,
            a vision of blinding glory and presence of God.
Who can bear to see all that!

A voice says, “Cry out.” And the prophet Isaiah responded, “What shall I cry?”
How does one respond and communicate such a vision of God coming in glory?
What is the glory of a human being in comparison with the glory of the Lord?
It is like the transitory glory of the short life of a flower.
In comparison all people are grass.
The grass withers, the flower fades,
            when the breath of the Lord blows upon it.
God but breathes upon us, breath which gives us breath,
            and in comparison with God’s timelessness,
                        that breath of life is but momentary.
Surely the people are grass – grass that withers, flowers that fade – terminal,             everyone of us.

But the Word of our God will stand forever.
Such is the comfort that God speaks to the people,
            the good tidings to be proclaimed.
God comes – with might, with an arm that rules, a strong arm,
            the symbol of power.
And with that power of God is reward and recompense.
And that strong arm will gather the lambs and carry them in his bosom.
THIS is the comfort,
            comfort with a twinge of fear:
                        knowing you are engulfed in a God of huge power.

Now Peter, his prophetic message:
“The Lord is not slow about his promise, as some think of slowness,
            but is patient with you, not wanting any to perish,
            but all to come to repentance.”
Why?
Because there is this day coming, the Day of the Lord,
            and it will be the end of life as we know it.

Now, before we all go off on various ideas about the Second Coming
            or God’s judgment on all humankind,
            and leap to theological conclusions, literal or symbolic,
consider this:
            that what follows in Peter’s letter
            is a description of what happens
            for each individual
            upon face to face encounter with the Living God.
Consider it personally:
            the day of the Lord will come like a thief” - suddenly and unpredictably.
Then the elements are dissolved with fire
            and everything is disclosed.
The elements from which everything is composed, all that we know
            goes up with a loud bang and a huge cloud of smoke,
            and we are left naked before the Lord.
Prepare to meet your Maker.

If not a literal process,
            this is certainly a spiritual process that will occur for each of us.
For some who are lucky, they will get knocked off their horse and blinded like Paul
            and they will repent and be saved
            and nothing will be the same for them;
            all the elements of their previous lives melt away.
So to make it easier on yourself, prepare for the Day of the Lord, Peter says,
            leading lives of holiness and
            “strive to be found by him at peace.”

The promise is that when everything we know, our old way of seeing things,
            goes up in flames, purged out of us,
then we will recognize “a new heaven and a new earth,
            where righteousness is at home.”
We will wake up, be aware of our salvation
            and no longer bound by patterns of behavior and attitudes
                                    from that morass of subtle, and therefore insidious sins,
            we will greet with joy the appearing of Jesus our Redeemer.
That is the message of comfort from Peter.                      

Now, the Gospel reading and John the Baptist:
What would Advent be without John the Baptist,
and his call from the desert to prepare the way of the Lord!

John the Baptist appears on the scene out of the wilderness,
            out of the desert across the Jordan river,
            a rocky, dry, barren, forbidding and harsh land.
He is a wild looking man with strange clothes and strange diet.

He tells us of a different kind
            of preparation for Christmas and for Christ's coming
                        than trimming the tree and gift buying.
Sometimes it takes a wild man
            to come in to our own figurative deserts,
                        the internal desert of the soul,
for us to become aware of that spiritual wilderness.
                                                Sin makes deserts out of our lives.

So John the Baptist, echoing the cry of Isaiah,
            calls us to repentance and confession of sin.
And here’s the Good News:
John baptizes with water,
            but the One he is announcing, whose Advent we are preparing for,
Jesus
            will baptize us with Holy Spirit – and with fire (Matthew and Luke add),
                        the fire that purges and cleanses
                        and enlightens us and energizes us,
that we may greet with joy the appearing of Jesus our Redeemer.

There is promise in all this talk about sin and repentance and Jesus coming.
Jack in his article on the Worship and Music Blog,
            which you all should have received in the Emmanuel email
            entitled Sunday Matters,
            picks up on this other theme for today: promise.
Everyone be sure to read these articles that Jack writes.        They’re good!

To quote Jack:
“Just like when we enter a river and the water rushes over us,
so when we are baptized are we entering the stream of God’s promises. Promises that go back thousands of years;
promises made to Adam, to Noah, to Abraham, the prophets, the apostles,
and to us.”

And the greatest promise is Jesus himself.

Come, Lord Jesus.