Origin Story and Incarnation

On this 5^th day of the 12 Days of Christmas

I will briefly tell you about the birth narrative of Jesus according to John,

         for that is what this Gospel reading is – a birth narrative.

         

Yes, we have the origin story as related in 

                  Luke’s Gospel and Matthew’s Gospel, none in Mark’s Gospel,

         but here in John the origin story goes cosmic.

The effect/the impact it has on me is to drive me to step back from 

                  the shepherds and angels, and stable,

         and consider the bigger picture in time and space 

                  within which this Incarnation took place.

 

In the First Century of the Common Era, 

         the geopolitical reality of the Roman Empire is that it had taken over 

                  the earlier expansive conquest of Alexander “the Great.”

The Roman Empire had imposed the “Pax Romana” 

         over the entire Mediterranean region and beyond

                  from Britain and Gaul in the North to Egypt in the South 

         and eastward swallowing up all of what was known as Asia Minor.

Pax Romana “peace” provided stability for this vast region

         but what sort of stability?

 It was a military presence to suppress any attempts 

         to break free and be independent 

         and escape the costs of this Peace that Rome was imposing

         to create an economic Peace – 

so that goods and resources could be extracted with impunity

                  throughout the Empire 

         doing this through an extensive imbedded tax system

impoverishing the peoples upon whom the taxes were imposed.

 

And God wants to incarnate specifically into human existence 

         in the midst of this abomination of creation?

Of course.                  That’s exactly what God would do:

         choose the worst possible set of circumstances and show up there.

 

Think of it this way:  everything/the whole universe in a sense 

         is incarnation – God with us.

Creation is the first Gospel – the origin story to top all origin stories.

But this is a specific Incarnation for a very specific purpose –

         to show us all for all time just how much God is with us, 

                  that it is God in us, or more accurately we are IN God.

  “in whom we live and move and have our being.” 

                                                               as it says in Acts 17:28.

 

So this specific, highly concentrated Incarnation event

         happens in a crude shelter in a small town of a small country 

         engulfed in a much larger and more powerful 

                                             military and economically exploitative power, 

where locally the Roman vassal Herod has his own pitiful reign of terror                            that includes mass murder of children.

 

As I said,

    under the worst possible conditions God incarnates as a helpless infant.

 

A helpless infant who provides the way for hope for the world,

         for every hopeless situation that ever was or ever will be.

Hope – Light – revealing, as incarnations do, the Love of the Creator

         that washes the blindness of our hearts out of us

         that liberates us from our desperately narrow self-interest,

         that expands our vision, 

         that saves us from ourselves.

 

Christmas, the way we might observe it,

   provides us the opportunity for experiencing what we call the Incarnation.

Another name for Jesus is Emmanuel – God with us.

But let’s take it a step further – God IN us.

         Or flip that – Us in God.

How many of you are familiar with the Chronicles of Narnia

         that favorite series of children’s books by C. S. Lewis?

         and the scene from book 6, The Magician’s Nephew,

                           which is the origin story for the whole series.

 

Aslan, the Lion, the Christ figure, 

         does not just speaks the words of creation, like in Genesis 1.

He sings them.

And everything comes into being in response to 

         tempo, key signatures, 

         and the dynamics of the melodies, themes and variations.

The energetics of sound, like primal light, produce the glory of creation.

Everything that exists flowed out of the mind, 

         out of the imagination of the Maker 

                  and bears the DNA of the Creator.  God in us and we in God.

 

Now, here’s the thing:

         Creation was not a one off event.

No deist theology of a cosmic clock maker 

         who puts all the stars and galaxies and plants together, 

         wound them up to run on their own 

                           and then retired for a Sabbath rest.

No, creation is a continuing process of coming into being,

         living, dying, decomposing, recombining and evolving life –

                           a continuous creative process.

And we all are elemental in this process.

We all exist within the infinite space of divine creativity, 

         and we are invited to join in the song of creation.

This is the glory – the wonder, the splendor – of it all.

This all is Incarnation.

 

Think of it this way.

         All that is coming into being is through the Incarnate Word.

A continuing process of birth, but with an astounding fact – 

         that this process of being born is not time sensitive, 

                  not limited by linear time,

                  but is infinitely / always happening.

All that is occurs within the womb of the Creator,

         and, if that is so, 

                  then this implies that the umbilical cord has yet to be cut.

         We are still being born.

         We are partaking in the Incarnation, even in this very moment.

 

And the word was made flesh and dwelt among us

and we beheld the glory of the only begotten of God.  

Apocalypse

Blessed Lord,

who caused all holy Scriptures to be written for our learning:

Grant us so to hear them, read, mark, learn, and inwardly digest them, 

that we may embrace and ever hold fast the blessed hope

given us in our Savior Jesus Christ. Amen.

 

You may have noticed that my sermons are always Scripture based,

         and that I usually focus on the Gospel reading.

I do that on purpose,

         in part, because I have been greatly influenced by the Collect for today.

 

Growing up in the Episcopal Church I wasn’t always taught much 

                  about what was IN the Bible, 

but this ancient collect from the 1928 Book of Common Prayer 

         was held up as our ideal for how to regard the Bible.

 

Hear, read, mark, learn and inwardly digest.

In other words, 

         go at it with thorough intent until it becomes a part of you.

 

Personally I first seriously took that on in my life 

         when I had an experience as a child 

                  attending a friend’s church of a different denomination 

         for their summer vacation Bible school, 

         where everyone but me knew the story about the Good Samaritan.

We were going to act out the parable, and no one wanted to be the priest.  But I thought the priest must be a good guy, so I volunteered, 

         only to discover that the priest was one of those 

                  who walked away from the person so desperately in need.  

That embarrassment was the beginning point for a deep dive

         into the whole of the Bible.

Whatever it takes to prod us, we all need to 

         hear, read, mark, learn and inwardly digest the words of Scripture.

 

So THIS Gospel reading for today.

         We get just the first 8 verses of the Chapter, 

but the rest of chapter goes on and on and on  with a total deconstruction 

         of history and culture and social order and religion, 

                  as well as the created order.

It is apocalyptic to the nth degree.                    Everything comes apart. 

 

And so, would you believe, this is a perfect reading for us today.

 

First of all, its placement in the outline of the Church liturgical calendar is apt.

Next Sunday is the last in this liturgical year, 

         and then we have the beginning of the new year 

                  with the first Sunday in Advent.

So thematically this is part of a bringing to the close of the year, 

                           the end of the story, 

         with next Sunday a supposed glorious climax 

                                                      with the theme of Christ the King.

However, NOT the glory of any worldly reigning monarch.

 

The Kingdom, the Reign of God, looks quite different.

         In the Kingdom of Heaven the first shall be last and the last first.

         The King is crucified and reigns from the cross.

         The Lion lays down with the Lamb and becomes a vegetarian.

         And the Good News is for the poor,

                  and for release of captives and recovery of sight to the blind,

                  and liberty for those who are oppressed.

 

This Gospel passage for today ends with the words:

         “These are the beginning of birth-pangs.”

 

All the deconstruction, the decomposition, the falling apart and coming undone 

         are part of the process necessary for something new to be born, 

                  to come into being, 

                  to emerge from the chaotic ruble.

These are not the birth-pangs for a devastation 

                                    of political or military upheaval or destruction,

         but for something new and entirely different.

And what is to be born is not at all like what has come before.

         If we just try to repair and reconstruct what has been there before,                            we will have missed the point 

                  and the great opportunity that apocalypse offers us.

 

Let’s take this out of the upper atmosphere 

         and bring it down to earth into today, here in the present.

Did you notice that we just came through an election 

                  that had a lot of anxiety hovering over it?

Did you notice that 

                  although some may have breathed a sigh of relief 

                  and others felt the depths of grief, 

         that, for the most part, life went on as it had and as it will.

Lessons are learned and plans for going forward are taking place.

Where will each of us engage in the world around us,

         and how will our faith inform our words and actions?

That is the same question we faced prior to the election.

 

But notice this in the Gospel reading:

         The disciples were gawking at the magnificent temple in Jerusalem.

It was the biggest and most impressive structure in the whole country.

It was the center of their faith and religious observances.

It was the place of all their religious functions.

It was their very identity as a people.

And it was all going to come down – not one stone left on stone.

 

The Christian Church today as an institution is fragmented,

         and has been for centuries.

The word Christian has been compromised.

It has been compromised by using it 

         as an adjective to describe a political form of exclusion.

         I’ll say it out loud: Christian Nationalism.

The word Christian for too many people is associated with 

         doctrines that judge and condemn 

                  others who do not believe the same doctrines, 

                  others who do not live life styles that fit a constrained moral law, 

The word Christian is sometimes associated with places of worship 

         where abuses of various forms were actually harbored .

Think boarding schools for indigenous children taken from their parents,          sexual misconduct by those who had been trusted faith leaders,          suppression of women or those of other races, 

         judgment and exclusion of anyone deviating from binary sexual identity.  

Do I need to go on?

There are some members who have come to this church –

         this denomination and this particular congregation – 

         from places where they no longer felt that they fit or were welcome.

 

And indeed, ever since the pandemic gave all the churches 

                  a good kick in the attendance records, 

         we have had to REALLY look at who we are 

                  and what is our purpose 

                  and what is our mission 

                  and what makes us real and relevant in the world today 

         so that we can come here and be welcomed, nourished, 

and equipped to face the world as it is outside this space of religious comfort.

The apocalypse is a deconstruction, 

                  an intentional disordering of the way things have been,

         so that there can be a re-ordering of the way we do church,

                           of the way we are church,

         so that we become more solidly grounded in our faith,

                  in our prayers, in our actions, 

                  and in the ways we love one another.

 

I love that what you have done here is to pitch in together

         and how you did a massive house cleaning of those rooms downstairs.

You actually put into action through that very concrete and tangible work

         what needed to be done in order to shift how you define yourselves

                           as a faith community.

It wasn’t just de-cluttering, but also creating an open space 

         for the Holy Spirit to move among you.

What you did is a metaphor for what needs to happen spiritually 

         for the community and for each of you individually.

Well done!

 

And don’t stop.

See and accept the grace and mercy and love given eternally to you.

And then live that grace and love and mercy,

         and in serving others pass on the love, mercy and grace                  

                in a world that really needs it now. 

The Eye of the Needle

The main reason any of us are here on a Sunday morning 

is because of Jesus.

 

Isn’t that so?

Those of us who have been hanging around church for sometime, 

do we not recognize that when we look at Jesus 

–      as he is reflected in scripture and, hopefully, in each other – 

that we are being shown something profound about the nature of God?

 

The more direct our experience of Jesus, 

the more a huge scope of horizon opens up for us 

about the awesomeness and wonder of God,                                            and about the vast comprehensiveness of our very salvation.

 

Jesus is the one who opens the windows of our hearts and minds 

to this hugeness of encounter with God.

This happens in our experiences of grace and mercy 

surprising us in our lives at our times of greatest need

            and when we least expect to see the Divine Presence.

This happens as we encounter the stories of Jesus in the Gospels 

where we see many different ways in which 

Jesus didn’t just open a window or door.  

He blew them off their hinges, so to speak.

So often in the Gospel stories it says the people were amazed.

Mild translation.

Literally in Greek it says their minds were blown away.

They were struck out of their senses.

 

Jesus was always saying things and doing things 

to turn everything around,

to jolt us out of the usual perspective,

because our usual perspective is commonly heavily influenced 

by the culture around us and by our unconscious assumptions. 

So it often takes a shock to bring us out of illusion and around to reality.

 

The Gospel story for today is a beautiful example of this, 

and as such is a tremendous open window 

into the nature of grace and mercy and God’s love and salvation.

 

And you might have thought that this reading was about stewardship!

 

We could be crass about the gospel for today

            and say that whereas Jesus asked for everything from the rich man

the Church only asks for a tithe, 10%,

            so you’re being offered a good deal when you fill out your pledge card.

 

Then we can all sit back and go, “Whew, we’re off the hook.

            We don’t have to take seriously what Jesus said to this person;

                        it doesn’t have parallel implications for us.

            I’m not getting hit with a challenge 

about giving away my whole paycheck and all my possessions."

 

However, I say to you,

            if this Gospel provokes within you 

some reflection about your relationship with material possessions, 

fine, that’s a very good thing to look at for our spiritual well being.

 

But the passage has more to do 

with the disciples who witness this exchange 

between the rich man and Jesus, 

and about salvation, 

than it does about tithing or pledging or charitable giving.

 

The challenge Jesus gives to this man who desired to follow him

            goes to the heart of this person's issues of life and faith,

and it gives Jesus the opportunity 

to use this with his disciples as an important teaching 

which is in direct contradiction to their accustomed beliefs.

 

The accustomed way of thinking about the relationship 

between material prosperity and enjoying God's favor 

is blown away,

and the disciples are brought into a different space of awareness 

that is vast, 

overwhelmingly comprehensive, 

and revelatory of God.

 

Now, there's a bit of background that would be helpful to know 

regarding that time and culture

that has stretched on through the centuries.

From OT times having many possessions, being materially prosperous

            was considered to be a sign of God's favor.

 

Certainly we say that we, for example, 

            are blest to live in this country with a higher standard of living

                                    than most of the rest of the world, 

and when we have jobs providing a steady income, 

we consider that a blessing,

and when we are able to afford taking a vacation, 

or buying a car, or remodeling the kitchen, 

we consider that a blessing as well,

            knowing that it is not always the case that we can get along so well.

 

This kind of thought is ancient and universal.

 

Sometimes it gets expanded into a whole theological doctrine,

            such as the "Protestant work ethic"

            in which hard work that pays off in material prosperity

                        is seen as an indication that you are under God's grace.

 

God has prospered the work of your hands,

            and, therefore, this is a clear sign of God’s favor –

                        a sign that you are saved, a sign of salvation.

The dark side of this comes to be seen 

in blaming the poor for their own condition.

 

Just look at the book of Job for a prime example of this sort of thinking

            that leads Job’s 3 friends to question what Job did wrong 

                        to bring on himself such disaster and suffering.

If you are blest by God, your life circumstances will reflect that, they say.

 

But Jesus blows that away.

 

The rich man runs up to Jesus 

just as he and the disciples are on the way out of town.

And he asks,

            "What is it I may do in order to inherit eternal life?"

 

He has been a good, religious person,

and this is evident because he has prospered and gained many possessions.

 

But he wants more.

Maybe the physical evidence of wealth 

isn't necessarily giving him assurance about salvation.

            Maybe he thinks that if he could do something more 

than observance of all the commandments 

his blessings would be even greater.

            Maybe he intuits that material prosperity does not satisfy

his spiritual hunger.

 

And Jesus, looking at him through and through, has deep love for him,

and so he speaks words to him to cut through 

all motives and assumptions of blessing 

to what it is that will open him to the realization of salvation.

 

Go, get rid of all that evidence of God's supposed favor and blessing.

Give it all to the poor, to those whose lives seem to indicate 

that they have fallen short of the divinely blessed religious path.

 

And then come be in discipleship with Jesus,

 

Come be reduced to the same status as the disciples

                        who likewise had turned their backs on their whole way of life 

                        and families and possessions,

in order to be near Jesus, follow him around, 

and take in his compassion and teaching,

because his very presence was so compelling

            and he touched the hunger in their hearts.

 

But – how hard it is for someone with many possessions 

to enter the Kingdom of God.

 

The disciples were amazed, blown away by this

because Jesus just wrote off 

the whole popular, commonly-held belief system.

 

And he confounds them further:

"It is easier for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle,

            than for a rich person to enter the Kingdom of God."

 

You can't buy your way into the Kingdom of God.

You can't live your life 

in such complete compliance with all the commandments even

to assure entrance.

And you can’t look at “success” in your life/“having it made”

            as equated with being saved.

 

If the rich, those who supposedly had God's favor, 

can't get into the Kingdom of God,

            then what chance does anyone have?

And so in all astonishment they ask, "Who then can be saved?"

 

And Jesus tells them the Great Reversal:

"It's humanly impossible,

but not with God.

            For all things are possible with God."

 

So those first in evidence of apparent divine blessing,

those first in effort at keeping all the commandments,

even those who look successful in the world

                                                                                    will ironically be last.

And those last, those who have no illusions about saving themselves,

            those who know their utter dependence on God,

                        such as those whose lives are broken and impoverished,

they will be the first ones in through the door – 

through the eye of the needle -  

into the Kingdom of God, into the state of salvation.

            

Salvation is utterly available to us 

the minute we give up our own efforts, 

our own self improvement programs,

because, and think about it,

            we can’t improve upon what has already been provided.

 

Salvation is vast, expansive,

            a freedom of the Spirit no matter what the physical condition.

Salvation is overwhelmingly comprehensive, 

            the way we are meant to be,   what we were created for.

 

So perhaps we may see that this gospel lesson for today,

            while it may provide some prodding of consciousness about stewardship,

is actually about the basic life issue of salvation

            and a call to discipleship

                        so that we might realize this salvation.

 

Go, get rid of all that evidence of God’s supposed favor and blessing,

and then come, be in discipleship with Jesus,

            the one who blows open the windows of our hearts and minds

                        to the hugeness of God and mercy and grace and salvation,

come be in discipleship with Jesus,

            and the whole Kingdom of Heaven is yours.