Christmas Eve sermon

O Holy Child of Bethlehem, descend to us, we pray;

cast out our sin and enter in, be born in us today.

We hear the Christmas angels the great glad tidings tell;

O come to us, abide with us, our Lord Emmanuel!

The blessings of the Holy Child born of Mary

be with you and welcome you here under this roof

            which tonight is a glorified stable adorned by loving hands

and where room is abundantly available

                        and no one is shut out.

Welcome! 

And we want to offer a special welcome to Emmanuel Episcopal Church

            to all those visiting here tonight,

                        family members and friends and neighbors,

all of us together joining in song and prayers

            and the sharing of our precious feast of bread and wine,

modest in that it looks small – a bit of bread, a sip of wine –

            like the baby in the manger,

but nevertheless a hugely abundant sacramental resource

            to nourish and strengthen the most hungry soul.

It is good to be here tonight,

            to choose to come here in the midst of whatever else is occurring

                        in your homes and your lives for this holiday.

May you find a refuge of love and joy here

            in the midst of a world of anger and violence and grief.

For many throughout the world life is particularly hard and dark

            either from warfare and terrorism

            or from a continuous denial of justice

            or from the aftermath of angry violence

                        at the hands of the mentally and emotionally damaged

            or the result of domestic violence

            or in the bondage of the new slavery of human trafficking.

So much inhumanity coming from human beings.

This year as I was pondering the ancient story of the Nativity

            one word in the text stood out for me in an unexpected way.

“And suddenly there was with the angel a multitude of the heavenly host…”

            -- heavenly host,            host --

What is it that we usually picture in our minds for this?

Do we see an angel choir with cherub faces

            floating aloft on gorgeous wings in the starry night sky

                        and singing glory to God?

But that is not what the word host signifies here,

            because the word in the text, which is translated as host here,

                        is actually the Greek word for army.

That shifts the imagery significantly.

The shepherds out in the fields keeping watch over their flock by night

            are startled by the appearance of a bright messenger from God

                        there in their midst

            announcing the birth of their Savior who, oddly enough,

                        will be recognizeable, because this will be a baby

                                                            whose cradle is a feeding trough, a manger.

And then to compound the paradoxical news

            the angel is suddenly surrounded by an army vast in number,

                        an army of angel warriors.

And their war cry is “Glory to God in the highest,

            and on earth – peace!

What were the shepherds to think?  or us?  What are we to think?

The historical setting for all this taking place

                                                was a particularly harsh and violent time.

The people to whom this angelic message came lived in a country

            groaning under the oppression of a conquering army.

Any hint of rebellion was put down violently by the heavy military presence,

            and further discouragement for revolt came in the form

                        of crucifixion publicly displayed.

And these people were being forced to pay heavy taxes,

            taxes to pay for the military expenses

                                                of the very soldiers standing over them.

Think of this – the largest part of the Roman budget was for the military,

            just as it is for us in this country today.

What might the shepherds hope for?

            God’s army come to liberate them?

Yet what do the angels say?

            Peace on earth in those humans of good will,

                        in those whose will is consistent with God’s will.

And this will be accomplished for you and in you

            through the Savior born this night,

born not in a royal palace to be commander in chief,

                                    but in an obscure and unlikely place.

What a wonder!

            In the midst of all this inhumanity of violence and cruelty,

the Holy Divine intervenes

            complete with an unearthly army of spiritual beings,

but not as a political, military supreme divine leader

                                    to oppose the divine Roman emperor,

            but simply as a human being,

                        a human being who would live among us

                                    and grow up and experience fully life in this world,

and who would show us what it really means to be a human being,

            what it is like to live into the full potential of human being.

And where did that full and mature humanity take him?

            Right to a Roman cross.

A violent end reserved for criminals and enemies of the state.

Yet that was the plan all along.

From the moment of the first breath of the baby Jesus

            his fate was sealed; there would be a last breath.

Thus it is with all of us.

But for the Savior he would spend his life and give that last breath

            as a gift to all  --  the gift of himself to be in us

                        that we might know, really know and experience

                                    that peace the angel army proclaimed.

This is liberation  --

            then and now

            from all that oppresses

            from every inhumanity that can be perpetrated.

If you do not know peace, the peace that passes all understanding,

            then come to the manger and gaze upon the Holy Child

                        until the peace comes.

The Christ Child is with us tonight,

                                    en-fleshed in bread and wine

            and our hearts.

I conclude with these words from another the carols:

Yet with the woes of sin and strife

            the world has suffered long;

beneath the heavenly hymn have rolled

            two thousand years of wrong;

and warring humankind hears not

            the tidings which they bring;

O hush the noise and cease your strife

             and hear the angels sing.

Sermon for November 16, 2014, at Emmanuel

Here’s one of these parables that we have heard a hundred times,

            one that we usually skim the surface of

                        and come to a quick moral for the story: “Don’t bury your talents.”

And as usual this keeps us from noticing spiritual truth hidden in plain sight.

Part of the reason why we do this is because our image of Jesus,

                        the one telling the parable,

            is that he is a nice guy, loving and good,

            and therefore must be telling us spiritually nice stories, holy stories,

                                    for illustrating some good action that we should do.

But as we look at these parables,

            we see that they always contain some twist that is unexpected,

                        something not quite right, and often downright outrageous,

            which is meant to get our attention and jar our moral sensibilities.

Today’s parable gives us an instance

            in which the usual cultural and religious orientation

                        gets flipped over,

and Jesus, the spiritual Teacher

                        who consorted with tax collectors and sinners,

            uses a morally corrupt story to deliver a vital spiritual message.

The story is morally corrupt because first the master,

                        while praising and rewarding risky business,

            certainly comes across as greedy and avaricious,

and second he even wants the slave to whom he gave the one talent

            to practice usury, which is forbidden by Torah.

You weren’t supposed to charge interest with your own people,

            although it was permitted with foreigners,

                        those outside the exclusive covenant community

                                                                                                            of the Hebrew people.

So this story would have shocked those listening to Jesus,

            and so caught their attention and got them engaged in listening.

Well, the shock value of the story today might not be the moral corruption

            but rather high risk taking.

The one who had received the one talent said,

            “Master, I knew that you were a harsh man,

            reaping where you did not sow,

            and gathering where you did not scatter seed.”

The master’s business, we can then see,

            was buying and selling agricultural products, crops.

He was the middle man advancing money to farmers,

            giving them promissory notes based on daily wages,

                        so they could buy seed and plant their crops,

                                    betting on a good harvest,

            which he would then sell to the Romans or whoever at a higher price.

This guy must have been pretty successful in this business

            because what he left to the management of his slaves

                        was a hefty amount.

1 talent = 6,000 denarii, 1 denarius was a day’s wage for the average worker

So 1 talent = about 20 years’ worth of income

            and each talent as a coin would be large and heavy – 75 pounds of silver.

There was a big risk taken with the 5 talents and the 2 talents 

            that was worth millions and millions of dollars in today’s currency. 

Each of those two slaves could be seen as both reckless 

            and, fortunately for them, very lucky with their master’s property 

not to have lost it on crops failing or drought or some other natural disaster.

The third slave was the most realistic and prudent, you could say.

            He knew the risks.

Having lived in Minnesota among farmers, I know first hand

            how each year they gamble on what they put in the ground,

                        and hope and pray it won’t be a loss.

Our model slave also didn’t want to exploit others through usury.

So he didn’t make an investment with the money lenders,

            and instead kept this extremely expensive coin safe from theft

                        by burying it in a hidden place.

In the story the outrageous and greedy master

rewards the two slaves that have the Midas touch,

and the morally conscious slave is the one who gets tossed outside,

            into the outer darkness, where there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth.

This is an outrageous story,

          but the parable is not about moral scruples or successful financial investments.

It’s about the risk.

If one is to be a follower of Jesus, to be in a discipleship relationship with him,

            you have to be willing to risk.

Playing it safe won’t work.                        Think about that.

Faith, one might say, is after all taking risk,

            taking risk in the face of conventional wisdom,

            conventional wisdom, which, of course, is not the wisdom of God,

because faith is not in trusting the perspective of the world culture,

but having a new way of looking at life,

            a perspective that comes through the Spirit, a new wisdom.

The ones who risked the most got rewarded.

But, notice this, get rewarded with what? 

Do you think they got to keep all that money they made?

            Remember, they were slaves; that money belonged to their master.

No, they were rewarded with more responsibility,

            more challenge for greater risk, that is, greater faith.

That’s the way it is living in the Kingdom of God.

So many of the Kingdom of God parables that Jesus told

            were about growth and expansion

                        from something relatively small

                                    like a mustard seed or a handful of leaven

                        to something bigger than expected

                                    like the seed sown on good soil that produced a hundredfold.

Jesus personifies the Kingdom of God.

            We look at him and see what the Kingdom of God is like.

And if anyone took risks, it was Jesus.

            He took risks with the disciples he chose and called to follow him.

            He took risks with those in power,

                                    political power or institutional religious power.

He took risks with his own life, with what giving up his life could bring.

Look at the cross – this cross here.

What do we notice about it?

            It’s big.

            It’s where everyone can see it.

            It’s right in front towering above the altar,

                        so that we look small in comparison.

What’s missing from this cross?

            The body –

            the body of a man who was being executed,

                                                                        being purposely put to death.

We don’t want to look at that – that’s too unsettling, disturbing.

But so important.

Because Jesus is the One,

                        who in the tradition of the great Spiritual Masters

            was taking on suffering for the sake of others.

Only in this case Jesus went beyond his usual healing of individuals,

                        releasing them from suffering, liberating them.

Now he did what no spiritual master had done before

                                                                                                            or needed to do since.

He took it all, all the suffering, of everyone, for all time.

            He took it all and took it to the zero point

            until there was nothing left of it, nothing left of death.

And then he broke through to Life that comes from the Source of all being,

                                    what we call Resurrection Life,

                        so that no one else need go through death.

What incredible faith and love this expresses!

Can you trust that?  Can you hope in that?  Can you place your faith in that?

This parable today is a challenge for us about risking the increase of faith,

            about doubling it at the least.

But is that for our own sake alone?  No.

The great Archbishop of Canterbury of the last century, William Temple,

            said that we exist as a church for the sake of those outside the church,

            to share the Gospel of reconciling, healing and transforming love.

Our purpose, according to this parable,

             is to become useful, productive disciples

                        whose lives produce the fruit of such qualities of life

            that we most desire: love, joy, peace;

            qualities that attract others to faith.

Jesus offered the world all of himself, so outrageous and so risky was his love.

Jesus continues to offer us this love, the devotion of his heart.

He says to you:  All of creation is in my heart;

you are surrounded by my loving heart,

and this heart is a place of refuge for your own heart,

and all that you hold in your heart.

Jesus offers us encouragement

that in this refuge of his loving devotion to us,

we are released, set free in such a way

that we can then respond in our own opening to offering ourselves

as living sacrifices of love and service for others

in greater sense of freedom

in which we can take the risks of faith,

and thus make possible “doubling the talents.”