Category: Sermon

Texts:
After John had been arrested, Jesus went into Galilee. There he proclaimed the Good News from God. ‘The time has come,’ he said, ‘and the kingdom of God is close at hand. Repent, and believe the Good News.’
As he was walking along by the Sea of Galilee he saw Simon and his brother Andrew casting a net in the lake – for they were fishermen. And Jesus said to them, ‘Follow me and I will make you fishers of men.’ And at once they left their nets and followed him. Going on a little further, he saw James, son of Zebedee and his brother John; they too were in their boat, mending their nets. He called them at once and leaving their father Zebedee in the boat with the men he employed, they went after him. –Mark 1:14-20
And when we arrived in the region of Jerusalem, in the month of flowers, our good emissary led and brought us inside Jerusalem. And its nobles and rulers were disturbed and troubled, and they asked us: “On account of what cause have you come here? Perhaps because of the mysteries of your magianism?” because they saw us looking up at heaven, and worshiping our sign, and praying to our guide, because they did not understand our mysteries and they reckoned us as magi. And we said to them: “We saw a sign of heavenly majesty in our land, as we were instructed by our fathers, that a king, and a messiah, and a life-giver, and a savior who gives himself to death for the sake of the entire world has been born here. And we have come because we saw all his signs and the forms of his hidden divinity in the appearance of a human clothed with a body. And we came, rejoicing with our pure gifts, which were deposited by our fathers in the Cave of Treasures of Hidden Mysteries on the Mountain of Victories.  And he commanded us in a great vision to come to this land to worship him in reverence, because he has worshipers in every country. He becomes for them a life-giver, and a savior, and a forgiver of sins, and through him the Lord of all is pleased with his creation and makes atonement with his people.” —RevMagi 17:1-6
“Nothing has been more marked in the whole movement since the Reformation than the process of secularisation which has extended itself to the whole of life.  Not only in thought but in action, large territories have been withdrawn from the control of the Church.  The ecclesiastic may still be mightier in politics than is assumed, but the theory at least is the direction of limiting his interference, and, in the public life of the community, his help is accepted in the capacity of a citizen not of an ecclesiastic.  This process is even forwarded by many, not with the intention of eliminating the sacred from life, but of including the whole of life within its operation.  With this has gone another phenomenon, significant of all the rest — the much slighter bond between the definitely religious life and the visible ecclesiastical organisation.  One of two things it must prove.  Mankind is leaving school either from disregard to learning, or from regard to life; either to forget its lessons, or to begin rightly to understand them by an independent application of them to reality.  Towards this secularisation of thought and action every religious teacher must determine his attitude, for of the fact there can be no dispute, and that it involves important issues of some kind can hardly be questioned.  Is it religion or only religious observance that is at stake; the power of godliness to control life or only the power of the clergy to control opinion?  –John Oman, The Problem of Faith and Freedom
 
My sermon title this morning poses an immediate and troubling question for many of us. John Oman recognizes the trouble when he states that while the church person may be mightier in politics than is assumed, the theory is in the limiting of such interference.   The great commissioning, as this charge is called, is presumptuous. It presumes precisely where we should be humble.
I met with my brass quintet last week for the first time since getting sick.  It was good fun to play together again and good fun to be with a group of friends who are not from the church.  No offense, of course, to any of you, its simply a fact that having friends from other areas of one’s life is good.  As we were wrapping up, having just discussed how often this “Quintet for Fun” would get together, the horn player commented on how nice it was to have friends in the clergy.  And then laughingly adding that you get access to a church building.  Whereupon the tuba player chimed in — “especially one that doesn’t try to save your soul!”
This is true — while I care that my friends, including you, are well with your soul, as that great hymn puts it, I care to care in a way that elevates value, in a way that adds to the beauty of the world, and not in a way that takes from these things (although if you had heard us practicing that night you might think otherwise).  John Oman’s words that we read today are germane, for the issue is not simply my wish to deny the special role sometimes accorded clergy in our society, but the acknowledgment that true freedom experiences the role of the sacred in life — and not the sacred apart from it.
The great commissioning is troublesome for the fact that it has been read as the end above all other ends, regardless of the means used to get there.  Sometimes those means are plainly destructive. Even more painful to me, is that that some Christians ignore these destructive means, because the sacred is apart from this world of cause and effect and what we do in this world to attain the other does not matter. But if I think that what I do in this world does matter, if that is even a precondition for us some of us being a Christian, then the question must be, in this diverse world, can I so understand Jesus’ call to repent and believe, can I get mixed up in this Jesus business and remain opposed to the great commissioning? I think the answer is yes. And more, I think that the answer is yes because of the nature of the God whom Jesus re-presents to us in the Gospels.
II.
When Jesus went down to the lakeshore and found there a few followers from among the many fishermen, did he simply walk down and proclaim that he was God’s son, come to save them from their sins, and expect them to follow?  The texts do not give us enough information to know exactly what Jesus said before he said “Follow me and I will make you fishers of men.”  But it is significant that both Matthew and Mark preface there telling of this story with Jesus’ announcement about the kingdom of heaven and the need to repent.
To understand this prefacing, we need to back up a moment hear how this statement might have been received by a Galilean fisherman 2000 years ago.
Perhaps because of the centuries of oppression by foreign occupiers, the Jewish people had developed a kind of literature known as apocalypticism. This apocalyptic literature had elements of scripture, but it was clearly a separate phenomena from what we know today as the Old Testament.
Apocalypticism was a religious movement that looked to this literature for some clues about when the end of their sufferings would finally dawn. In this literature the still hidden course of things to come is revealed in order to inform believers of what will happen in the near future.
Whether apocalypticism was your thing or not — its language was part of culture, that much has not changed! The thing that has changed over the course of those 2000 years is that our world view has switched from mythological to scientific. What I mean by that is that before we understood that our earth was but one small, hardly unique planet among hundreds of thousands, the we understood our history in terms of ages, or aeons — the current aeon which was evil, and the one to come that would be eternal and beneficent because it would by the one in which God would rule.
From the apocalyptic worldview, humans have a responsibility in the present age to create the circumstances necessary for the turn of the aeon. In the time of Jesus, people were convinced that God had given the laws required of people to create those circumstances. Jews lived under considerable anxiety about this circumstance, because they would be judged for their fulfillment of the law. This judgment would be the deciding factor of their admission into the kingdom of heaven.
The imminence of the next aeon could be expressed with the metaphor of a drinking cup that is filled with time. If it is full, then the time is fulfilled and God would usher in the new kingdom.
From a theological perspective this meant that the law was god. They directly confronted only the law. The law was what they set their hearts on; it was what shaped them. And to the extent that they understood themselves in the same evil aeon, they still had time left, they could still create the conditions necessary for their acceptance into the new aeon.
But if we look carefully at the text, we see that Mark, and Matthew with him, reverses the order. Jesus announces that the cup is filled. There is no more time left. Here, at the beginning of Jesus’ ministry he makes a new theological statement. The old theological statement was that the law was god and required anxious action — the new statement is that God is the one who invites our re-action to the offer of the kingdom now. The meaning of repent, then, in this passage is simply to accept.
In fact, from a translation standpoint, we should find a better word. Repent implies precisely the old theological vision that anxious work is required of the disciple. To repent is to engage in an action we must do. But the verb would be better translated a bit more literally — to see from a new perspective. God offers a present kingdom, a way to live free of anxiety — we are to turn our faces in a new direction so that we might see it and accept it.
III.
A moment ago, I suggested that more happened between Jesus’ announcement of the new aeon and the call to follow him down by the lakeshore than is written. And now we know what that “more” must have been. One does not see the world from a new perspective except through a realization by personal engagement that the new perspective makes a difference. Unless we hold to a magical or supernatural intervention, Andrew and James would have no reason to suddenly leave their boats and livelihoods. A conversation must have happened in during which these two fishermen were led to trustingly rely on this good news that we just talked about.
One does not change one’s livelihood simply on the promise to provide an interesting life — one changes one’s way of life, however, when another way answers the question of our heart’s longing — to know that I am a freely loved, to know that my acceptance does not depend on my having to perform a task which is impossible. To answer the call of Jesus is to respond to his question, with, as I put it a few weeks ago an answer that has always already existed. To be free to answer the question of life with a full heart and a full mind, to love and be loved with out the anxiety of whether that love is right or acceptable — that is the moment when one’s perspective shifts, that is the moment when it is possible to lay everything down and say “Here I am.”
I am guilty — I have no doubt — of making this more complicated than it is. Jesus’ is a question anyone can answer. And to the degree that we avoid the prevailing dogma and rules that have become a part of what Christianity has morphed to become, we make religion the important thing and not the religious observance; we offer the power of the love of God, and the ability to un-anxiously love God, as of a piece of life itself, and not as the part of life to control behavior and opinion. Will you set the worship of your heart on the ground laid out by these controlling rules, or will you turn about now and be free of such restrictions so that you can love now?
The magi, as they bore witness to the newborn one who would invite people on this journey to fuller horizons, encountered the skeptics. “How can you, who are the evil magi, have any knowledge of the good Messiah?” How, after all, could they know anything about how full the cup is? They don’t know the rules. Despite these anxious naysayers, they carried on in their journey, unswayed by the blind and anxious refusal to let go, to simply announce what they know. They would not go any further than that , they would put no spin on it, but would simply announce it as fact.
And what do they announce, these foreigners to the Jewish apocalyptic world view? They proclaim that the new aeon has come — look for yourselves. And then they offer this marvelous litany of ways to look: We saw signs that a king, a messiah, and a life-giver, and a savior has been born. He becomes [for us] a life-giver, and a savior, and a forgiver of sins, and through him the Lord of all is pleased with his creation.”
There is no single, proper way, or words to use to describe this fact. We can live as Christians in a world of many nations and even bear witness to this life-changing, point of view altering fact, without trouble because the language we use is fluid, and that simply means that simply means that God’s realm comes in peace. Amen.

I was of the original mind that I would read a sermon of King’s, in honor of his birthday. I have decided against that for two reasons – first, his sermons are long – they’re great, and I don’t think you would be bored, except that it’s hard enough to preach someone else’s sermon – let alone a long one.
The second reason is that last weekend’s shooting in Arizona cries out for some attention.
So, I’m going to borrow heavily from King. I think I do this borrowing well in the spirit of King’s conviction of nonviolence. In one of his most famous sermons, after which today’s is shaped, “A Tough Mind and a Tender Heart,” King did this very thing, drawing heavily on a sermon by Gerald Hamilton Kennedy titled “The Mind and the Heart.”
The mass shooting last weekend would surely have raised the preaching bells for King whose deepest concern was the cultivation of nonviolence, and which he often expressed pastorally by quoting a Frenchman who said that we are strong not when we exert power with guns or ideas, but when strong impulses to power are balanced with equally strong impulses to humility and peace. He called this having within oneself “antitheses strongly marked.”
Balanced individuals form the foundation of a nonviolent ethic. The concerns that are swirling around last weekend’s shooting – highly charged, ideologically driven language, hate-filled or violent metaphors, are met in King’s insistence that nonviolence is not simply a turn-the-other cheek ethic of meekness, but a intelligent balancing of opposites in our private and public lives.
Jesus recognized the need for blending opposites. He knew that his disciples would face a difficult and hostile world; they would confront the recalcitrant powers that be, and the grand protectors of the old order. He knew that they would meet cold and arrogant men whose hearts had been hardened by the long winter of traditionalism. So he said to them, “See, I am sending you out like sheep into the midst of wolves;” And he gave them a formula for action,”be wise as serpents and innocent as doves.” It is pretty difficult to imagine a single person having, simultaneously, the characteristics of the serpent and the dove, but this is what Jesus expects. We must combine the tough mind of the serpent and the soft heart of the dove.
I.
First, then, to be wise as serpents. It cannot be that we are to be serpentine in the mythical sense of having destructive aims, but instead to be of a tough mind – to think well and offer a realistic appraisal and a decisive judgment. The tough mind is able to sift the true from the false even through the tough crusts of tradition and myth that forms the identity of a culture.
The American culture is right now divided. A tough mind is required. And yet, we see, in the incessant ranting, from one side to the other, about who is to blame, that this is not easy. Rarely do we find people who willingly engage in hard, solid thinking. There is an almost universal quest for easy answers and half-baked solutions. Dr. King puts it bluntly — “Nothing pains some people more than having to think.” To determine fact from fiction is harder and harder and the ability to do so has eroded as trusted sources of authority, and I here include the pulpit, have shied from speaking hard thought truth and from inviting critical thinking. These outlets have learned that most people are soft-minded, and they capitalize upon this with skillful zeal.
Soft-mindedness invades religion, as I just suggested.. This is why religion has sometimes rejected new truth with a dogmatic passion. Through edicts and bulls, inquisitions and excommunications, the church has attempted to dam the living waters of truth and build a stone wall in the path of the truth seeker. Historical criticism of the Bible is considered blasphemous, and reason is often looked upon as the exercise of a corruption or futility or both.
We do not need to look far to detect the dangers of soft mindedness in religion When the precepts of religion are open only to special pleading and the pure light of reasoned conversation is extinguished, the leaders who control the language control the people. Adolf Hitler realizing that soft-mindedness was widespread, used language to lead a country into barbarity. In a famous passage in his Mein Kampf, he asserted:

By means of shrewed lies, unremittingly repeated, it is possible to make people believe that heaven is hell – and hell, heaven . . . The greater the lie, the more readily will it be believed.

Soft mindedness is one of the basic causes of violence. The tough-minded person always examines the facts before he reaches conclusions; in short, he postjudges. The tender-minded person reaches a conclusion before she has examined the first fact; in short she prejudges and is prejudiced. Violence is based on the groundless fears engendered by soft mindedness and prejudgment.
Too many with a public voice recognize this disease of soft mindedness that engulfs our culture. With insidious zeal, they make inflammatory statements and spread distortions and half-truths that arouse abnormal fears and morbid dislike of anyone with whom they disagree, leaving them so confused that they are led to acts of meanness and violence that no normal person commits.
There is little hope for us until we become tough minded enough to break loose from the shackles of prejudice, half-truths, and downright ignorance. The shape of the world today does not permit us the luxury of soft mindedness.
II.
But we must not stop with the cultivation of a tough mind. The gospel demands a tender heart too. Tough mindedness without tenderheartedness is cold and detached, leaving us in a perpetual winter devoid of the warmth of spring and the heat of the sun.
Our culture has convinced us that capitalism’s pure utlitarianism is Biblical. In a nutshell, God takes care of those who take care of themselves. Whether Mr. Laughner shot because he was alienated by this culture, angry at it, whether he felt himself an island among a sea of humanity, we do not, and likely will not know. But there is no way that the crass utilitarianism of our culture cannot be implicated in the alienation of individuals from their human family in the midst of such tough heartedness.
Jesus frequently illustrated the characteristics of the hardhearted. The rich fool, to name one example, was condemned not because he was tough minded, but rather because he was not tenderhearted. Life for him was a mirror in which he saw only himself, and not a window through which he saw other selves.
Jesus reminds us that the good life combines the toughness of the serpent and the tenderness of the dove. This is hard to do, and we often fall short of achieving balance, falling back, instead on simple mindedness and tough heartedness.
But balanced, these two ways, the way of critical thinking and the way of graceful living, opens for us the vista of King’s beloved community and makes the hope for peace and justice worth acting upon.
III.
But what about the fact that the Arizona massacre was committed by a mentally ill person?
It is true that we talk very little in our culture about mental illness. It is the hidden disease and it carries a shameful label. Rather than deal with the fact of mental illness, we prefer to pretend it does not exist, we use slurs to speak about the people burdened with it and prefer to keep those with mental illness from our public eye. These are all characteristics of a failure to be tough minded.
It is also true that our failure to be tender hearted creates islands of humanity separated from the rest of humanity. Our culture of hard heartedness builds antipathy toward the other, creates distances between us that only makes mental illness worse, perhaps leading it to erupt into violence.
IV.
Let me conclude by briefly applying the meaning of the text to the nature of God.
The greatness of our God lies in the fact that God is both tough minded and tenderhearted.
The Bible, always clear in stressing both attributes of God, expresses God’s tough mindedness in justice and tenderheartedness in pure love. God has two outstretched arms. One is strong enough to surround us with justice, and one is gentle enough to embrace us with grace.
Too often, I am afraid, we have given God the attribute of omnipotence – which is simply a projection of our propensity to fall into hard heartedness and weak mindedness. For a God of all power and might, is not a God able to react to injustice in love.
If God were omnipotent, that is weak minded and hardhearted instead of strong minded and tender hearted, then the events of the last weeks, should be brushed off by the argument, that, well, “boys will be boys.”
Instead God, in bearing these attributes, both transcends the world and is related to it. God sets us free in God’s transcendent need for freedom and weeps with us in sharing our agonies and struggles.
The national prayer today is for a kinder gentler tone, for greater civility. King’s vision for civility, that is a public balance of tough mindedness and tenderheartedness, reminds me of John F. Kennedy’s hope for progress in the midst of the civil rights movement and unrest. At his inaguarl address, he did not simply remind the country that civility is not a sign of weakness, but he combined the need for civility, for tenderheartedness with the need for reasoned conversation, for tough mindedness.
“Let us begin anew—remembering on both sides that civility is not a sign of weakness, and sincerity is always subject to proof.”
We will succeed in our best hopes as we are tender-hearted and tough minded.
amen.
 

Texts:  Matthew 2:1-12
“And I am everywhere, because I am a ray of light whose light has shone in this world from the majesty of my Father, who has sent me to fulfill everything that was spoken about me in the entire world and in every land by unspeakable mysteries, and to accomplish the commandment of my glorious Father, who by the prophets preached about me to the contentious house, in the same way as for you, as befits your faith, it was revealed to you about me.” — Revelation of the Magi 13:10
There is no other light shining in Jesus than has already always shined in the creation. Man learns to understand himself in the light of the revelation of redemption not a bit differently than he always already should understand himself in face of the revelation in creation and the law – namely, as God’s creature who is limited by God and stands under God’s claim, which opens up to him the way to death or to life. If the revelation in Jesus means salvation as an understanding of oneself in him, then the revelation in creation means nothing other than this understanding of oneself in God in the knowledge of one’s own creatureliness. — Rudolf Bultmann, “The Concept of Revelation in the New Testament”
I.
We all know the story. Three kings, Caspar, Baltasar and Melchior, royalty from the Orient, dressed in finery and bearing gifts of gold, frankincense and myrrh, travel across deserts on camel back to visit Jesus in Bethlehem.  They kneel at his manger, with the animals and his parents looking on in wonder at this visit from such important, royal guests.
That story is a collage.  It takes bits and pieces from history’s stories and pastes them into the happy story we know today.
I happen to like this particular piece of the collage:
A New Englander was travelling in the south at Christmastime.  In a small southern town there was a “Nativity Scene” that showed great skill and talent had gone into creating it. But one aspect of the nativity was puzzling.
The three wise men were wearing firemen’s helmets.
Totally unable to come up with a reason or explanation, the New Englander stopped at a convenience story at the edge of town.   He asked the lady behind the counter about the helmets who exploded into a rage, yelling, “You stupid Yankees never do read the Bible!”  The northerner assured her that he did, but simply couldn’t recall anything about firemen in the Bible.
She jerked her Bible from behind the counter and ruffled through some pages, and finally jabbed her finger at a passage. Sticking it in his face she said “See, it says right here, the three wise man came from afar.”
Well, nobody can deny that what is in the bible regarding the kings, is scant. There is plenty of room for more detail.
To an extent yet to be determined, however, that is changing as we speak, especially if Oklahoma University Professor Brent Landau has anything to say about it.  His translation of the pseudopigraphal text The Revelation of the Magi, (hereafter RevMagi) for his doctoral thesis in 2008 has just been published as a popular coffee table Christmas present.
(The book comes in at number 1,083 which is quite amazing.  By comparison, I am reading the brand new, excellent translation of Stendahl’s The Red and the Black. It has a ranking of 704,354.)
I learned about this book and the translation of the ancient scripture, late — by Googling, in fact, for the joke, the details of which I could not remember last Sunday in my failed attempted to be humorous.
Despite the way the popular press has been presenting this, the document was not discovered by Landau in some kind of Indian Jones expedition.   It has been researched off and on in modern times, and was clearly known about in the middle ages.  However, Landau is the first to have published a critical English edition, and the first to have examined the fragile and disintegrating text with modern, scientific methods.
It is a rather fascinating read.  While there are some points of contact in the RevMagi with the story as we read it from the Gospel of Matthew — the Magi come from the East guided by a star, and they pay a visit to King Herod, and when they arrive they offer gifts, the differences are substantial.  The Magi do not need not need to be warned in a dream not to return to Herod because they see right off that he has no light, that he is “deceived,” as the text puts it.  A major difference is that the light first leads them to a cave where the light is transformed into human form.  Our brief reading this morning, comes from the conversation this human form has with the magi in that cave.
II.
While all of this is interesting — what has grabbed my attention, and apparently the attention of other scholars as well, is the possibility that the author or authors of the RevMagi intended to present the gospel of Jesus in a distinctly more universalist light than may be said of other Christian scriptures.
In order to see this, again, you have to put aside your warm and fuzzy Christmas Creche scene and remind yourself that these wise men are really magicians. Magicians do not get such a good rap in the early church.  You may recall Paul, in the Acts of the Apostles curses one magician, calling him the “Son of the Devil,” and blinding him.  John Chrysostom the famous 2nd century preacher, urged his congregation not to dwell on the magi, for they are detrimental to God’s plan of salvation for you.  The magi would not have been welcome in Jerusalem.  This offended the Jewish sensibility.  Matthew’s gospel does not say anything about this offense — but the fact that they got 12 verses is surprising.
The new text has a different vision, it is perhaps this vision that got it relegated to the dustbins of the Vatican.  But that vision is now available for us to consider on our own, for its merits.  The Revelation begins:

About the revelation of the Magi, and about their coming to Jerusalem, and about the gifts that they brought to Christ.  An account of the revelations and the visions, which the kings, sons of kings, of the great East spoke, who were called Magi in the language of that land because in silence, without a sound, they glorified and they prayed.  And in silence and in the mind they glorified and prayed to the exalted and holy majesty of the Lord of Life, to the holy and glorious Father, who is hidden by the great brightness of himself and is more lofty and holy than all reasoning. (RevMagi 1:1)

The scurrilous Magi are the first to worship, the first to tell of the glory of the Lord of Life as the revelation from God .
Professor Landau, in his notes to this text, remarks that Lord of Life is an infrequently used title in Jewish and Christian literature, but fairly common in Babylonian, Zoroastrian and Hindu worship materials.  Here in the opening words we are given hints that revelation has more to do with who we are as humans than with who we are as citizens of a certain part of the world, or adherents to a certain belief system.
III.
The chapter from which our text comes this morning is the new to us scene in the Cave of Treasures of Hidden Mysteries .  The magi are led to a cave by the light, and Jesus appears for the first time.  His first Epiphany.  Chapter 13 begins — “And when it had concentrated itself, it appeared to us in the bodily form of a small and humble human, and he said to us: “Peace to you” (13:1). The rest of the chapter relates details of this first epiphany.
The purpose of his coming in human form, he says, is to “concentrate [God’s] light in its rays,” in order to reveal the majesty of God “for the sake of the redemption of the lives of human beings.”  God he says, “has loved them [so] that they should not perish.”  Like John 3:16, RevMagi also sees God’s love as a love for the world.  Unlike John, RevMagi never blames the Jews for failing to see Jesus as the fulfillment of the ancient prophecies.
RevMagi replaces the well known anti-semetic polemic of John, with a theory of epiphany that casts the blame for failure to see God’s light on human nature.  But they also suggest that revelation is possible due to human nature as well — because that which is revealed is nothing which is not always already there. “I am everywhere, because I am a ray of light whose light has shone in this world from God.”
I have no doubt that the RevMagi, could lend itself, depending on what verses you choose to isolate, to a reading of God’s revelation in Jesus as it has classically been understood.  That is, the historical event of Jesus, by some supernatural force, brings us to understand the mysteries of life in such a way as to be Christian, and only in that way.
Let me repeat myself.  Like any scriptural text, some will want to interpret it literally — suggesting that the transformation of the light into a human form, requires a special understanding which is  inaccessible to anyone who does does not have that special understanding.  Classical Christian ideas of God’s revelation in Jesus, suggest that what is revealed requires special knowledge gained via supernatural mysteries.
IV
The text is fascinating, but this is a sermon so I want to conclude by calling you to a decision about this light.
On this reading, Jesus did not come into the world as a test, weeding from the elect, those who could not believe in his coming as a once and for all solution to our ills, On this reading, Jesus calls each of us, where we are, because that call, while once localized in a human form, is nevertheless nothing but a call to understand that which has always, already been present.
In other words, the call of Jesus is a call to be true to who we are. The call of Jesus is a call to question, again, and again, who we are so that we do not become like King Dionysius in this morning’s children’s story (Pythias and Damon) — filled with hate and mistrust because he could not think for himself, because he could not love others, but let others do that work for him.
The magi in the Gospel of Matthew have a hunch — what we have here identified as the beginning of an epiphany.  That hunch became a full blown epiphany when they acted on it.  And when they did, writes Matthew — they took a different road home.
So, do not let the classical reading of revelation keep you from your epiphany.  But let the light lead you to see better who you are and what the road best taken for you will be.
Amen.

Someone was recently asked, in one of the innumerable year-end summaries that our news outlets are prone to do this time of year, to summarize 2010 in a sentence.  She gave one word — mean.  No doubt from a political perspective 2010 had plenty of meanness.  Here, at the fresh start of a new year, I want to acknowledge that our hopes for a better year in 2011 arise from the obvious realization that the joy of the season just ending, often stands in stark contrast to the mean, or difficult, or just plain sad realities of the time.
I am not going to complain about 2010.  But I will say about it that I’d rather have had this kind of year we just had in the church than anywhere else. Here, at least, these painful, difficult events are allowed to take on a gracefulness they might not otherwise have had.  The events do not change — but the grit and determination we muster to face them find their reason in greater company.
Let me not be misunderstood.  I do not hold to the idea and certainly not the experience that in the church, all pain and difficulty is wiped away.  Nor do I espouse the idea that these experiences have the quality of a test and those who hold to the church pass that test and are admitted to some kind of eternal happiness apart from this world.
I am more Johannine than this.  With John, I do not believe that the coming of the logos into the world is the coming of a hero arrived just to set things aright.  John does not announce, in this prologue to his gospel the coming of a man-god; it is not the gospel of a hero. There was then, as now, some desire for a theos anthropos, as the Greeks called their desire to sweep away our troubles, for a hero to ride in and present God in pure revelatory splendor.  Instead, John writes, at the end of his prologue that no one has ever seen God — but that God has translated God for us.  This is an awkward sentence in Greek, and I have left the awkwardness to make this point — the revelation of God would be an event of interpretation, not an event of power and might.
God will come in the flesh.  It will be life.  It will be grace in the midst of grit.
II.
I suppose it was my thinking about this lectionary text that made  take notice of a column in the New York Times last week by a retired law professor about the movie he’d just seen called True Grit.  I might not have read it except he began by noting  that the movie critic Dan Gagliasso complained that this new version of True Grit destroyed the heroic climax of the old movie with John Wayne.  Professor Fish agrees but does not bemoan that fact, but lauds it. I read on and then convinced Erin to go see the movie that night.  Here’s what he wrote:

there is an evenness to the new movie’s treatment of its events that frustrates Gagliasso’s desire for something climactic and defining. In the movie Gagliasso wanted to see — in fact the original “True Grit” — we are told something about the nature of heroism and virtue and the relationship between the two. In the movie we have just been gifted with, there is no relationship between the two; heroism, of a physical kind, is displayed by almost everyone, “good” and “bad” alike, and the universe seems at best indifferent, and at worst hostile, to its exercise. (Read the rest of the article here.)

I’d need to watch the movie again, if I were to spend the rest of the sermon reviewing it.  I will say though that the movie ends with a most remarkable cinematic display of the word made flesh.
It’s a wide shot up to the top of a bare hill — bare but for one gnarled and lifeless tree and 5 or 6 gravestones and Maddie — the movie’s main character.  She is now in her middle age and you can clearly see her outline missing the arm which she lost to a snakebite at the very end of the action —  just at the moment you thought she would be the real invincible hero of the movie.  The camera cuts to the cemetery with a few stones in the immediate foreground as Maddie walks off into the distance, saying ““Time just gets away from us” before the credits roll to the music of an old spiritual: “Oh how sweet to walk in this pilgrim way / Leaning on the everlasting arms / Oh how bright the path goes from day to day / Leaning on the everlasting arms / What have I to dread what have I to fear / Leaning on the everlasting arms.”
John’s true grace and the movie’s true grit are inextricably mixed.  At the beginning of the movie the adult Maddie narrates that nothing is free, it’s all a struggle, except for grace.  And for those without grit, the grace is pale, the translation incomplete. There is no promise of peace, there is no promise of escape from the inexorable march of time — there is only the promise of grace.
III.
Let me return at the end, back to where we began — with a glance back at the past and  a prayer for the future.
For most of the 21st century, we have been fighting a war in Afghanistan.  This past year has seen two terrible developments.  The death toll has risen.  711 service men and women from around the world have died in 2010 in Afghanistan.  The numbers are more difficult to calculate for Afghanis.  The School for International Studies in Vancouver has been monitoring the Human Rights situation in Afghanistan since the beginning of the war.  They estimate for the 2010 that 6 civilians are killed per day as a direct result of the war.
We could easily be Maddie walking off that hill in True Grit.  The tombstones of humanity piling up behind us — recognizing that things have gotten away from us.
And here’s a brief mention of the other terrible development.  Our laudable desire to rid the country of the Taliban has had no effect, either on the Taliban themselves, or on certain prominent figures who are proclaiming that they want the Taliban — that the Taliban are not so bad.
The two movies, the John Wayne’s “True Grit” and the Coen Brother’s “True Grit” offer two different visions for Afghanistan.  It is time to see that John Wayne’s “Dead or Alive” grit  has no grace.  We are not the light shining in the darkness.  True Grit calls for a different way; for a fresh realization that

we are not good enough to use violence, not pure enough to direct history through violent means. Peacemaking requires not extreme heroism, but a humble restraint in identifying enemies, and an everyday commitment to caring for members of one’s body in mundane ways: feeding the hungry, clothing the naked, visiting the sick and imprisoned, all of whom, Jesus says, are Jesus himself. (read the lecture in its entirety here.)

Let us start over. Let us encourage a humble restraint in all things passionate and eschew heroism.  Let this new year be a year when our voices blend with grace.  And may the light shine upon the people who walk in the darkness. Amen.

A story on the news last week told of a Methodist church in central Texas who has staged an “extravagant living nativity” every year out under the stars.
Instead of having their pastor stand out in the cold, the use a 1959 recording of Perry Como narrating the story.
“Yes, the three men on the camels are the three wise men,” says Como in his velvety smooth voice. “The new star guides them to Bethlehem to a little baby lying in a manger. There the three wise men present gifts to the Christ child.”
It’s a scene not unfamiliar to any of us, although I like the idea of having someone with a lovely voice, unaffected by the cold do the narrating. In fact the story could have been set anywhere. Except that this church happened last year to try modernize the creche. They realized, correctly, that the creche was a tool developed in the mid 13^th century to transmit the gospel. In this way, it is no more historical, nor any less true, than the story of Jesus feeding a thousand people with a few loaves of bread. In other words, while a scene like our modern day creche never happened, it does tell a true story.
My question today, is what is that story? Why happens when we make and view creches?
I have no easy answer to that. But let me relate three anecdotes that may either individually or collectively bring us to a sense of the gospel of the creche.
I was having dinner with the rest of my family a few weeks ago, and as is our habit, someone had to get up midway through the meal to find a dictionary. Our conversation had led us to wonder what the word creche meant? Where did it come from. Obviously it was French, but what did the french word refer to?
Turns out that the word has three definitions.
The third definition is the Christmas nativity scene, so that was not helpful. We already knew that.
But the first two definitions were helpful.
The second definition was “a public nursery, where the young children of poor women are cared for during the day, while their mothers are at work.”
And the first, and likely the oldest definition is simply the public care of children.
You don’t have to remember these definitions, but I’ll bet you said, “Aha” to yourself when you heard them. From the beginning when St. Francis of Assisi began setting up creches for people to observe on their daily routines during the Christmas season, it has been a symbol of the kind of care we know to be best and a reminder at the same time that our human nature so often turns our better angels out into the cold.
One who did not, so far as I can tell, turn those angels out into the cold, was the donor of the very creche set that we use today.  Betty Carr was given this set many years ago by her niece-in-law – Caroline Perly.  Betty wanted to share it and so she gave it to the church.  She could not let such a piece of art be private, but it would be for the public care of souls at the Waterbury Congregational Church.
Care — said the famous philosopher Martin Heidegger — was the foundational stone of all philosophy.  For him you could not talk about what it meant to be a human being without talk about how it is that we humans can care for one another.  That may seem rather simple and obvious but the implications of this notion are not widely accepted because the require us to think ourselves in relation to a comprehensive Being.  Heidegger talks about the requirement placed upon those of us who would do more than wander in the darkness.  He says that if we are to find our way once more into the nearness of God then we must the connection between the public and the private — care, he says discloses that relation.
One of the many take home lines from Christmas eve comes from our Christmas Carol O Little Town of Bethlehem,  “Where yearning souls long to be whole, the dear Christ enters in.”    The story of the birth of Christ, with or without the creche is the story of the of the longing for resolution between the public and the private — and care is precisely that bridge.
In 1982 members of the African central committee of the World Council of Churches wrote a document called an African Call for Life.  In that document they take a long hard look at this relation between what they say they do, as Christians in Africa what is happening on the ground in Africa.  A child in Ghana is interviewed for this study.  He is not properly nourished.  But they ask him, “Who is Jesus Christ?”  He reply is breathtaking:
“Oh! Jesus.  I have heard of that name.  You say he is the Life of the World. Life!  But I am hungry.  I am lifeless.  There is no milk in my mother’s breasts.  She is sick and weak.  They tell me some people called “Red Cross,” are sending or have sent some powdered milk.  But I am hungry.  I am dying.  You say that Jesus is the life of the World?  But I am dying.  Can Jesus help me to keep alive?”
The touching part of the creche is easy for us to enjoy.  The animals talking to one another, enjoy the company of their human counterparts.  It is the vision of peace we hope for.  But care — the other concept in the creche calls us into the future — to bring a mature Jesus into a modern world.   Not to talk about the miracle of the loaves and fishes as a miracle — but to do the loaves and fishes as a hard, but necessary task.
The creche says — you are, by your very essence — care.  Now honor that Being of which you are a part and  live caringly into the new day.  Amen.