God's Adoption Plan

The Christmas celebration continues

            And today’s sermon is about God’s adoption plan.

 

From the Epistle reading for today, Galatians 4, we read:

4   But when the fullness of time had come, 

            God sent his Son, born of a woman, …

5   in order to redeem those who were under the law, 

            so that we might receive adoption as children. 

6   And because you are children, 

            God has sent the Spirit of his Son into our hearts, 

            crying, "Abba! Father!" 

7   So you are no longer a slave but a child, 

            and if a child then also an heir, through God. 

 

And this brings me to the Gospel reading for today.

 

The first Sunday after Christmas Day, 

the Gospel is always what is called the Prologue of John,

            the first 18 verses of John’s Gospel.

 

It is also the Gospel for the 3rd set of readings that can be read on Christmas Day, 

as well as showing up 6 times  [count them à 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.

 

The first chapter of the gospel of John 

has been 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.

 

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.            Wow!  All that in one passage

In these few verses we are told how everything has been taken care of.

 

In the beginning…

in the ame 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, 

                                                                                                            that is, creating.

So 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 l/ogos, 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 Son.

 

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 it,

            the Logos, the Life, the Light.

How do we do that?            by having faith in his Name.            his Name.

 

Verse 12: “As many as received him, who believe in his name, 

            to them he gives power to become children of God.”

 

Quoting from a commentary on the Prologue of John,

            that was written by my meditation teacher:

 

“…faith is not belief in doctrines, 

            is not about ideas held with conviction, 

            is not even fundamentally a self-generated trust in God 

                        for the sake of one’s own ultimate well being. 

No. Faith is the wakeful potency of the Word in us and as us. 

Faith is the power of our being as divine life.” 

                                                                                                Ponder that.

 

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, 

                        maybe latent, but definitely possible as a great strength within us.

And Jesus is the One who lived that potency of faith as light for all of us.

 

Again verse 12:            “As many as received him, who believe in his name, 

                                    to them he gives power to become children of God.”

 

It isn’t until the 17^th verse that the Name in whom we are to place our faith 

                                    is revealed: Jesus, in Hebrew: Yeshua,

            a Name that means salvation, to deliver, to make wide, spacious, 

to be or live in abundance, freedom, liberty.

That’s what the Name Jesus means.

 

So you can see the Name Jesus, as we are graced to experience it, 

            incorporates within it tremendous depth,

                        the Name through which we are adopted into the family of God.

 

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 along with that

            when one belongs to a family when one is adopted:

there are 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…

                                                full of grace and truth.

 

Glory, that is, expansive presence, radiance of life,

            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, the Logos, is full of grace and truth,

            whose whole being expresses the very nature of divine creativity,

            who is Living Truth.

 

Now here is the main point:

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, just as he was.

 

So the context for our life together at Nativity

            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

                        now at the end of 2021

                        and as we enter a new year and a new chapter 

                                    in our life together as the faith community of Nativity. 

Risky Business

 Last night I was wondering what the church attendance would be like 

            for Christmas Eve and for today.

We were nicely spaced out in numbers over the three services,

            and that made it safer for us all.

 

For these Christmas services one might feel like attending 

            would be sort of like

                        running a gauntlet through a COVID infested environment, 

            but then most of life could be seen as running a gauntlet 

                                    in one way or another.  

We are surrounded by life threatening things all the time –

                        walking across a street,

                        slipping in the bath tub, … you name it.

 

Think of this, for instance:

It’s amazing how many babies actually make it into this world 

            survive the teen years, 

            and live to adulthood, 

            maybe or maybe not having to deal with war, 

            and now facing world wide pandemic and global climate catastrophes. 

 

This gets me to thinking about just how risky it was for Jesus getting born –

            risky on many levels:

                        the wrong time of the year,

                        while on a journey,

                        during a time in world history of military and imperial domination,

                        no room in the inn (let alone a hospital), 

                                    and certainly no room for the poor.

 

So the birth happens in a stable,

            a place not fit for human habitation.

 

And so too is the place of birthing 

                                    that occurs spiritual in the human person.

            Our hearts may not always be welcoming 

            and may have their own unsanitary conditions to hinder a holy birthing.

 

The birth of Christ does not occur in human hearts in a place of abundance, 

            but most usually in a place of poverty 

                                    and in the places unfit to live in.

 

Let me share with you what one of my favorite Franciscans has written –

Richard Rohr:

 

“There’s really nothing necessarily pretty about the first Christmas. 

We have Joseph breaking the law, 

knowing what he should do with a seemingly “adulterous woman,” 

            but he doesn’t divorce Mary as the Law clearly tells him to do, 

even though he has no direct way of knowing 

            that the baby was conceived by the Holy Spirit. 

It can certainly lead us to wonder why so much of Christianity 

            became so legalistic 

when we have at its very beginning a man who breaks the law 

            to protect the dignity of the woman he loves. 

Then we clearly have a couple that is homeless 

and soon to be refugees or immigrants in their flight to Egypt 

            shortly after Jesus’ birth.”

 

How tenuous this birth was, how uninviting the world,

            and yet this was the divinely right moment for such an important birth.

 

Wherever in our hearts there is despair, darkness, sin, deep wounding,                                                 betrayal, abandonment, failure, disaster, oppression, 

            it is there that the human heart out of desperation will open

                        and become a manger in a filthy, stinking stable

            to welcome a tiny, hopeful birth

of the One who brings with him the unfolding and expansion of the K of G.

 

It is to those who walk in darkness 

            that the great Light comes.

 

And for those who show up for church this Christmas, 

            my prayer is that God who took on human flesh, 

                                    who so identified with us out of love, 

                        will fill us all with a sense of this divine presence 

            so that we will have the courage we need 

                        to face whatever is in front of us 

                        and to do that with a deep abiding sense of joy and love.  

 

Make each home a Bethlehem,

            make each heart a Bethlehem, 

                        a place to welcome newborn Love,

                        newborn awakening to the radiance streaming from him,

                                    greater than all the Christmas lights,

                                    revealing to us the Divine Light,

                                    filling us with Light.

 

Fear not, the angel said, and I try to agree with that.  

 

May you have a blessed Christmas.

Episode 4

Finally!  Episode 4 

            and we get to John the Baptist.

Advent just isn’t Advent without John the Baptist.

 

This year we are not getting his fiery sermons.

            We don’t hear him yell at us, “You brood of vipers!”

 

This year we get to look at his nativity, his birth.

            And there are some interesting things to note about this.

This is the back story,

            before John became a wild man dressed in camel hair

                        with grasshopper legs and dribbles of honey stuck in his beard,

            coming out of the wilderness to baptize people in the Jordan River,

                        re-enacting the Children of Israel crossing over Jordan

                        to enter anew into the Promised Land,

                                    this time the Kingdom of God at hand.

 

Zechariah and Elizabeth did not name this child Zechariah Junior.

            Their friends, family and colleagues who had gathered for the brit

                        figured that given the circumstances

            old, mute Zechariah would want this child to carry on the family name,

                                    so this was a surprise.

 

There was also probably an implicit expectation

            that this late born son would continue in his father’s profession,

                        carry on the family legacy of the priesthood.

He would have a favored place in the clergy hierarchy in Jerusalem.

But, as we know, none of that would happen.

            For this child was already anointed by the Holy Spirit

                        for a prophet role, a specific prophet role,

as the precursor for the One who would upset the whole religious enterprise

            and proclaim the Gospel of Good News

                        that the Kingdom of God was at hand.

 

I wonder if it was hard for John, growing up with elderly parents,

            to escape being absorbed into his father’s profession

                        which was specifically handed down father to son.

But no fancy vestments for him,

            and no succumbing to deferential treatment and status 

                                    he could have as a priest in that culture and society.

 

There is some speculation that John left all that behind

            to go out into the desert,

                        quite possibly to the community of the Essenes,

            sort of an early form of Jewish monasticism 

                        down by the Dead Sea

where two millennia later ancient scrolls of the prophets would be found.

 

All we know from the witness of scripture is that he was in the wilderness 

            until the day he showed up and started preaching.

The wilderness, the place devoid of any signs of human habitation

            in the raw elements of nature,

            is the place traditionally where God can be encountered,

            where nothing distracts the attention from the witness of creation itself.

 

It was in the wilderness that Jacob, fleeing his brother’s understandable anger,

            took a stone for a pillow 

            and that night had a divine epiphany

                        that showed that God is too immense to be housed

                                    in anything less than the vastness of the starry ski.

 

John, touched from the womb with the Holy Spirit presence of Jesus,

            will be able to recognize him 

                                    when he shows up on the banks of the Jordon,

            John, who will say to his own disciples, “Behold the Lamb of God,”

            who will state about Jesus 

                        “He must increase, and I must decrease.”

 

Last of the Old Testament Prophet,

            John will be the bridge to the New Covenant 

                        of God’s justice and peace and righteousness and kingdom.

 

Notice the words in the Canticle, the Song of Zechariah,

            the first words out of his mouth after nine months of silence.

Zechariah proclaims that God, “promised to show mercy to our fathers  
               and to remember [the] holy covenant.” 

 

The old covenant “was the oath [God] swore to our father Abraham.”

 

The purpose of that covenant was

            “to set us free from the hands of our enemies, 
Free to worship [God] without fear,  
    holy and righteous in [God’s] sight 
    all the days of our life. “

 

And the covenant, of course, had two sides, two parties agreeing to it.

            God’s people would follow the Torah, the Way of Life,

                                    what the Law, the Commandments point us to.

            That was the side for God’s people to do,

but the other side is what God promises to do:

            to set us free from the hands of whatever is an enemy to us,

                        whatever binds us in fear, that’s what the enemy is – fear !

            and thus set free, we can then truly worship God

                        and live in right relationship with God,

                                    or that is what righteousness and the Way of Torah is:

            right relationship with God.

 

Now there is a new covenant, a renewed set of promises,

            for now God commits to us a savior.

 

Zechariah continues his song speaking prophetic words:

 

You, my child, shall be called the prophet of the Most High, * 
    for you will go before the Lord to prepare his way, 
To give his people knowledge of salvation * 
    by the forgiveness of their sins. 
In the tender compassion of our God * 
    the dawn from on high shall break upon us, 
To shine on those who dwell in darkness and the 
                             shadow of death, * 
    and to guide our feet into the way of peace, shalom,

            which is wholeness, well being, the fullness of life.

 

And John grows up to do his job and he does it well,

            attracting lots of attention 

                        with his wild appearance and powerful, prophetic speech.

 

And then when he has handed over his own disciples to Jesus,

            his role of precursor complete,

he is taken completely out of the scene at the whim of a despot 

                        with a scheming wife who is astute in getting her way.

No reward for John for his faithful ministry,

            and no opportunity for John to see the salvation of his people?

That, my friends, is reality; there is not always a happy ending to every story.

 

Or is there?

 

We have now completed our pilgrimage though Luke, Chapter 1,

            all in preparation for the main event in Chapter 2,

so that our hearts will be open to receive the Nativity of our Lord.

 

If we identify ourselves here with the Nativity, 

                                    if that is the name we call ourselves as a faith community,

            then we have a great gift waiting for us under this Christmas tree, 

a gift that can transform our repetitive prayers week after week, day after day,

            from merely a religious obligation, a transaction with God,

                        to an awakening, a coming to consciousness in our hearts.

 

This would be a truly life giving gift,

            for we would realize how much we are loved by God,

                        how everything fits together

                                    for us as individuals and for us as a faith community.

We would finally find words to describe our connection to Jesus,

            sweet baby Jesus in the manger

                        and the Jesus who tells us parables that jar our consciousness

                        and the Jesus who shows mercy to repulsive lepers 

                                    and foreigners like the Syrophoenicion woman 

                                                with the demon possessed daughter 

                                    or the crazy man living in the tombs haunted by a legion of ghosts.

Or the Jesus who would not compromise truth before Pilot,

            who would die for love of us

                        and conquer death that we might live

                                    not just a life in heaven after the body gives out,

                                    but a fullness of life right now

                        a life of confident joy because our faith has been enlivened

            in our heart’s encounter with him.

 

Heart awareness is a moment to moment choice to let our truest self emerge into our lived reality and intersect with the outside world.

 

That’s why Luke wrote Chapter 1,

            so that we can receive Chapter 2 with open hearts and be transformed.