Jesus and Genesis: His Creation

Scripture Readings:
Genesis 1:1-2:3
John 1:1-18 (RSV)

An astronomer was giving a public lecture and he announced, “I have swept the universe with my telescope, and I find no God.” A musician stood up and objected. “That statement is just as unreasonable as it is for me to say that I have taken my piano apart, and examined every piece with a microscope, and I have found no music.”

The Bible shows us the music. The Bible shows us God in the universe.
The first book of the Bible, the book of Genesis, is a book of beginnings and foundations. It shows us the spiritual principles and the spiritual foundations of the universe, and of this planet in which we live. The first chapter of the Gospel of John does the same.

John shows us Christ in the universe; Christ in the very beginning. John shows us that Christ is not a late comer. Christ and his cross are not an afterthought.
John tells us that we can see the fullness of God in Christ. Christ makes God known. (John 1:18)

Christ is God. And John tells us that we can only see the universe and this planet of which we are a part if we see Jesus for who he is, because, “All things were made through him and without him was not anything made that was made. In him was life and the life was the light of men.” (John 1:3-4) This means that, in his light, we see his life: his nature and his character. And in his light we see how that life is reflected in what he has made; how creation functions in the light of his nature. We see how to live as his children in his creation.

We can only understand the universe in the light of Jesus. The part of the universe we know best is the part we call the earth, and the earth (for all its wonder and beauty) is full of stuff that frightens us or angers us. The world often outrages our sense of what is good. If God is love (1 John 4:8) then the part of the universe we know best is very much alienated from God. It often acts as if it were the very enemy of God and what God stands for.

The Bible, itself, clearly tells us this. The Bible tells us that the prevailing ways of this world are dark, and they are unable to comprehend the light that reaches out to bring life to the world. The world seems driven to overcome the light wherever it finds it.

But the Bible also tells us that it is the very nature of Jesus to give himself up for the forgiveness, and the healing, and the peace, and the transformation of wrong in the world; starting with humans, starting with us. Jesus is the Word that was in the beginning; the word that spoke the universe into being and began it all when God said, “Let there be light” (Genesis 1:3)

Jesus is the light that gives us life because the voice that said, “Let there be light,” essentially said, “Let there be a cross. Let me give myself and die for the sins of the world.” Jesus is the living word that says “let there be light” and “let there be a cross”. We cannot understand a world so full of wrong unless we know that it was made by a God whose nature it is to make things right by his own sacrifice, his own suffering, and his own death.

The word “word” in Greek means a message. It means “meaning”. The universe is encoded with a message and with meaning, but the message and meaning only reveal the God we can see in Jesus, who lived, and died, and rose from the dead for us.

The reason for this is because, “All things were made through him, and without him was not anything made that was made.” The one who was going to die for the sins of the world left his mark on the world from the moment he first made it. We can only understand the universe in terms of redemption; in terms of the cross; in terms of someone who lays down his life to set others free. (Matthew 20:28)

In a real sense we live in a universe that only works when there is someone who does something for others. This is the music. This is the message. This is the most basic of the principles and foundations of the universe. This is the light that gives life to men, and women, and children, and to the whole world. This is the light that shines in the darkness. This is the work that God does in Christ, who is God.

John says, “All things were made through him, and without him was not anything made that was made.” The Gospel of John teaches us a lot about the oneness of God the Father and God the Son. John is saying that all things were made through Jesus and with Jesus, in a partnership between Jesus the Son and his Father.

The Spirit is there, too, only John doesn’t explain that. He knows that Genesis has told us enough.

The point he makes is that they were all there before there were days to count; and before time itself. They were all one. They were all God.

There is a kind of partnership built into the universe; built into the world of which we are a part. It is not just the human race that is part of this partnership. “All things were made through him.” All created things show the nature of the partnership of the Trinity.

The world we live in works best when we live as partners and not as lords of creation. The Bible teaches us that the human race was designed to subdue the earth and rule it, but we can only understand our role as rulers of the creation if we understand the role of Jesus as lord of the creation.

How does Jesus subdue us? How does he rule us? He does this in love. He does this in taking care of us. His rule as the lord of creation works by the same principle we see in his incarnation; his becoming a human in his own creation. He rules through his nature as a servant, as a mediator of grace. Jesus rules through the same patterns we see in his life, and in his willingness to offer himself sacrificially on behalf of his own creation.

When he made us in his image it means that he shares his work of creation with us. It also means that he shares his method of working with us. This is one of the foundations and principles of the universe, and things don’t work right unless we work his way.

But this isn’t just what we were created for. It is what we have been saved and set free for, by Christ.

When we were created, our having been made in God’s image was our authority to be partners with God in his creation. Since things have gone wrong we have to know the Lord as our Savior, as the one who has laid down his life for us so that he could give his life to us.

John tells us that when we receive him, when we let him bring his light into our darkness, and his fullness into our emptiness, and his strength into our weakness, then we become children of God. When Jesus makes us children of God, it comes in the form of a power, or an authority. Jesus makes his Father our Father and we become part of the family work again; the work of being a partner and a care-giver in the work of doing something redemptive for others.

This is our calling as the family of God together, as the church. This is our calling, among ourselves. Jesus will say, “By this will all men know that you are my disciples, if you love one another.” (John 13:35)

But this is also the face we show to the world. The world is God’s creation. The world is the scene of God’s redemptive love on the cross. The world is also the scene of our creating and redeeming work, as children of God, as partners of God. Our family, our community, our nation, our world are all the setting for our work.
A friend of mine was telling me about the marriages in his family: his own marriage, his brother’s marriage, his sister’s marriage. He said, ‘We have all had to learn to make our marriages work in our own way. We have all had to ask, “What do I have to do to make this work?”’

This is our job as Christians, if we are sincere about being children of God. We look at our family, at our church, at our livelihood, at our community, at our world, and we ask: “What do I have to do to make this work?” The need to answer this question is built into us by our creation and by our salvation. The need to answer this question is one of the principles and foundations of the universe.

It has to be remembered that we are God’s partners in his creation and his redeeming love. We are God’s partners, but we are not God. We do not experience God’s power except as grace and truth coming to us from beyond ourselves. Grace is God’s beauty and mercy. Truth is God’s reality and God’s reliability. This is what he wants us to experience and share with the world.

John tells us that, “The word became flesh (became one of us), and dwelt among us, full of grace and truth.” (John 1:14) He still promises to dwell in us. “Dwell in me.” “Abide in me, and I in you.” (John 15:4)

Life seems designed to remind us of our neediness, but knowing Christ is like being given an inner fullness that you could never hold onto, on your own. “And from his fullness have we all received grace upon grace.” (John1:16) When we meet Jesus in our Genesis (when we know what it means to be created through him) this is what we find.

This is what gives us power to be children of God, “who were born not of blood, nor of the will of the flesh, nor of the will of man, but of God.” (John 1:12) This is part of the music, because it comes from God. And since we are made through Jesus, it is a part of us.

Fellowship vs Partnership

Preached: 1-10-2010
(Originally from 1-10-1993)

Scripture Reading - Philippians 1:3-11

A newly wed husband had always loved camping (he knew all about woodcraft and survival), and his wife had never been camping in her life. He couldn’t get her to go camping for their honeymoon, but he did for their next vacation. After their first day in camp, he took her for a day’s hike and he got them completely lost.

He tried to find their direction from the moss on the trees, but that didn’t work; and from the sun, but it was too cloudy. His wife began to panic, until they spotted a cabin in the distance. The husband carefully studied the cabin through his binoculars and then he turned around and led the way straight back to camp.

When they got there the wife said, “That was terrific honey, how did you know which way to go when you were so lost?” He said, “Simple, in this part of the country all TV satellite dishes point south.”

Paul, with all his experience of the Lord’s love and his desire to love and serve the Lord by loving others, is like an antenna focused on Christ. He points us the right direction; maybe not back to where we came from, but to where our real home is.
Paul tells his friends in Philippi that he is praying for them. He tells them how he prays that, “your love may abound more and more, in knowledge and depth of insight.” (Philippians 1:9) And something about the way he describes this prayer and his love for these friends of his tells us where he wants us to go.

There is a certain way of “abounding in love” which Paul is able to express in such a wonderful way; but even more he is able to live it out in such a way that he became a gift to others, and he was able to teach his friends how to be the same kind of gift.

This is a love that we have to pray ourselves into, or have others pray into us, because it is pretty far beyond us. I mean, as much as we may want to love others, do we really want to have insight into them? Don’t we really want them to understand us, first? And so Paul is teaching us about the kind of love that we pretend that we want, until we really experience love as a pure and undeserved gift.

Part of Paul’s gift of love was to see other people as his partners. And Paul also saw his purpose in life as being a partner for them.

First of all Paul, felt this partnership with other people who knew the love of Jesus. They were just like brothers and sisters to him. He would never be able to disconnect from them, or walk away from them. He would always have to want what was good for them, because they were his brothers and sisters in Christ.

Before we go on, though, we have to say that Paul saw his purpose in life as sharing the good news of the love of Jesus with people who had no concept of that love at all. He could never have done what he called “defending and confirming the gospel,” which means defending and confirming the love of God for us in Jesus, unless he was living proof of that gospel in action. People who had no notion of the love of God in Christ would have to see the value of it from their contact with Paul.

In the church, we have the word “fellowship” which we might think of as a kind of togetherness, but fellowship is just an old King James English word for “partnership”. There are so many churchy things we do that must seem odd to others. We think these churchy things give us the blessing of fellowship in the form of togetherness. The truth is that the things we do together are meant to train us to be partners; to think, and pray, and work together.

Fellowship is a good thing. There is nothing wrong with the word. But fellowship is not nearly enough. Paul wanted his people to become partners. And this was not just his idea. He had learned this from knowing Jesus. He had experienced “the affection of Christ”.

Partnership in Christ is all about necessity. You can have fellowship when you like each other. But you only have partnership when you need each other.

Sometimes, when I get frustrated, I like to think that I just don’t need what is frustrating me. In fact, I sometimes get tempted to think that I don’t need anything. The truth is that whenever I think that I don’t need anything or anyone, I am definitely being stupid.

There are a bunch of churchy things we call fellowship, and some people don’t do them because they don’t enjoy them, and they also don’t do them because they don’t know that they need them. And those of us who are used to doing these churchy things don’t even think about why we are doing them.

We call worship fellowship. But worship is not fellowship. It is partnership because in worship we are called to come as we truly are into the presence of God as he truly is, and we can never truly know ourselves or know God without knowing ourselves and God in the light of others. Knowing ourselves and God in the light of our partnership with others is the test of truth. It is true that we can never truly know God or ourselves without the work of the Holy Spirit within us, but we also cannot do it without the gifts and the fruit of the Holy Spirit working on us through other people’s lives.

All the cozy, churchy things we do that form our fellowship with each other are actually supposed to be the construction sites where we learn about our partnership with others. The reason why things like Bible studies, and potlucks, and choir practice when we have a choir, and elders-and-trustees-and-committees, and visiting people in the hospital and nursing homes, and the Lord’s Supper are all examples of what we call fellowship is because they are only doorways or windows that we enter in order to become partners in each others lives, and partners in the Lord’s life.
When Paul tells his friends that they all, “share in God’s grace with him,” (1:7) he is actually using that Greek “partnership” word again. We need to be partners in grace and partners in the gospel before we can be good partners in each other’s lives.

When you study business, you learn that, of all the different ways to organize a business (like setting up a corporation or a sole proprietorship), the most unstable of all forms of business is the partnership. A business partnership depends 100% on the part each partner plays, and each partner is completely responsible for the other partners.

The church is a partnership. It is both a surprisingly tough and a surprisingly sensitive thing. One person, one hasty word, one lapse of memory of an absent minded pastor or member, one forgiving gesture, one pat on the back, one good word, can change everything.

So we need to be partners in the grace of Christ in order to have the ability to do the right things, and in order to have the ability to forgive when the right things are lacking. Each one of us, as partners in the gospel, needs to let that gospel live in us.

The gospel is about mercy, compassion, forgiveness, patience, strength from God, and a new life. A little girl once asked a pastor, “Who is this amazing Grace we’re always singing about?” I think being a Christian means growing up in the school of grace where grace teaches us, every day, to be gracious.

We need this gift because our partnership is such a sensitive thing, and yet it is surprisingly tough, because we are partners in Christ and anything started by Christ has got to be a tough and scrappy thing. It has got to be impossible (or almost impossible) to stamp out, because “He who began a good work in you will carry it out to completion until the day of Christ Jesus.” (1:6)

Another part of the gift that Paul points us to is the gift of praying for the growth of others. “This is my prayer, that your love may abound more and more.” (1:9)

What do you do when someone else is doing something wrong? What do you do when someone is somehow deficient somewhere? Well, of course, you help them; as Paul promised to do for his friends when he was set free. And you pray for those people. You pray for those people to abound. You pray for them to be helped. You pray for them to grow more loving, and faithful, and committed, and hopeful, and wise.
This is part of being partners in Christ. When you are partners in Christ, you always keep on praying for good things for your partners.

That’s what Paul means when he writes, “I yearn for you all with the affection of Christ.” The Greek language, in which Paul wrote, had a funny way of referring to affection; something very picturesque. Affection is a word that refers to the intestines, the liver, the lungs, and the heart. “The affection of Christ” is literally “the intestines of Christ”.

I imagine that this odd way of describing affection came about because someone you care deeply about can tie everything inside you into knots, or make your heart flutter, or cause you to hyperventilate.

I imagine that when Paul wrote “I long for you all with the affection of Christ,” he felt something like what mothers and fathers feel when their kids are playing on the football field, or on the basketball or volleyball court, or playing in school plays, or playing a band solo, or lined up in a spelling bee. You must want to cheer and take an antacid at the same time.

Parents feel all kinds of pride, fear, and desire because parents are their children’s partners, and they are always praying for good things for them. This is what the Lord wants us to do for each other all the time.

We see in Paul the gift of assurance about others; the gift of confidence in others. This doesn’t mean seeing others through rose-colored glasses. If you did that how could you possibly see clearly enough to pray for them or help them? That’s why Paul wanted them to be able to love “with knowledge and depth of insight.”

Paul wrote, “I am sure that he who began a good work in you will bring it to completion at the day of Christ Jesus.” I think that here Paul has the hope and the realization that our worries, and frustrations, and fears for others will resolve themselves and drop away when we see each other in the full light of Christ, and see Christ face to face.

Growing up as partners in Christ, growing up in Christ, can be fun and wonderful, and it’s a lot of trial and error too, and it’s probably a good thing we don’t fully realize just how important every day of our lives is in making us what God intends us to be. The important thing is that your life is a good thing started by God, to which God wants to bring meaning and peace; and because of Christ, you have a different kind of life that is started by the Lord. You have a new life that is always new every morning (if you are willing to believe it).
We need to hear God’s voice telling us this.

I am thinking about the song “Amazing Grace” and the last verse that says, “When we’ve been there ten thousand years, bright shining as the sun, we’ve no less days to sing God’s praise than when we first begun.” We will always be growing forever, and so we are all just beginning on the road to being the people that God is planning us to be, but Paul says that we can have confidence that God will get us there.
We don’t understand our own potential unless we put God at the center of it. And we also don’t know what to make of others (our own family, our neighbors and friends, and our fellow members) unless we trust God about them. We need to never forget to long for them with the affection of Christ; which means trusting that Christ loves them the way Christ loves you (if you really believe that Christ loves you).

So you serve them any way the Lord allows you to serve them. And you speak to them with any word the Lord gives you to speak to them. And you put them in the Lord’s hands, and you know you can trust the Lord to take care of them and nurture his meaning for their lives just as he cares for you (if you know that he cares for you). This is spiritual partnership.

The same word that gives us the idea of partnership, and sharing in grace and fellowship, also gives us the translation of the word “communion”; as in communion with the body and blood of Christ.

When we are partners we make an investment of our lives in each other, and we can do this because Christ has invested his life in us. He spent his life to the last drop for us, and now he really lives in us. When we share in the communion together, we are saying that we love him for doing this and that we want to be his partners, and partners with each other forever.

Expectant Believers: An Exchange of Treasures

Scripture Readings: Isaiah 60:1-6 and Matthew 2:1-12

They say that life is not about arriving, but about enjoying the journey. I am not sure what to think of that saying. Around Christmas time I usually make a journey, and I am very interested in arriving.

The story of the wise men who followed the star to Jesus is about a journey, and not very much about arriving. Sure they did arrive, but I think they hardly did more than stay the night.

The story of the wise men who followed the star to Jesus is also a story about gifts. Matthew gives us a list of those gifts: gold, frankincense, and myrrh. Those are meaningful, significant gifts; royal and costly gifts: but that’s not what I want us to think about.

Their greatest gift was their journey. All their kingly gifts were probably not as costly to them as that journey they made; hundreds of miles or more, over deserts, and over the hostile borders between Rome and Persia.

Only the wise men gave such a gift: the gift of a dangerous, difficult journey. They gave their journey to honor Jesus, the King of the Kingdom of God. No one else gave Jesus such a gift, even though there was a whole city full of people in Jerusalem who knew what those wise men were looking for.

The journey of the wise men symbolized what the prophet Isaiah talked about; about, “Nations will come to your light, and kings to the brightness of your dawn…Herds of camels will cover your land, young camels of Midian and Ephah. And all Sheba will come, bearing gold and incense and proclaiming the praise of the Lord.” (Isaiah 60:4 & 6) Their journey was the first installment of a gift that the world has yet to give.

When you make a long journey with gifts for loved ones at Christmas, it is your journey that is your greatest gift. Your journey is the biggest and most difficult statement of your love.

If your whole life is a journey, the same truths hold true. If we are all on a life-journey, then our journey is our greatest gift to this world in which we live. Our journey is our gift to those we love and to those who travel alongside us.

In the story of the wise men, the journey and the gifts are all bound up into one simple thing, and so are ours. Our journey and our gifts are really the same thing.
There are many gifts of the journey. Let’s think about just a few.

First, let’s look at two gifts that God gave the wise men through the birth of Jesus in Bethlehem. These are also his gifts to us. They are the grace of God.

The first gift is shown by the star. This gift is as hard to understand as it is important to understand. As the wise men would have understood it; what brought Jesus to be born in Bethlehem, and what brought them through their long journey to Jesus, was a cosmic event; an event that involved the whole universe, all of heaven and earth. It is important for you to know that Jesus coming into history, and even your own coming to Jesus, is part of a cosmic event that involves all heaven and earth.

The star that Matthew tells us about is a mysterious thing. We can’t fully understand it.

One aspect of that star is that it seems to be part of an astronomical event. Ancient people called everything up in the sky stars.

What they thought about the stars is not simple to describe. The stars were stars. The planets were moving stars. The comets were moving stars. The seeming coming together of planets, so that they appeared to touch or join together in the sky, was also called a star. This was a star that came and went.

Now this coming together of stars is called a conjunction of the planets. There was, in the year 7 BC, a conjunction of Jupiter and Saturn, in the constellation Pisces. In the philosophy of that time Jupiter stood for royalty, Saturn stood for Israel, and Pisces stood for the end of one age and the beginning of the next. So the conjunction meant that a king would be born in Israel who would bring the end of the age and the beginning of a new one.

A record of this conjunction has been found on a clay tablet in the ruins of an ancient observatory in Sippar, Babylonia, in what is now Iraq. This record shows that Jupiter and Saturn came together on May 29th, and October 3rd, and December 4th of the year 7 BC.

This is not a justification of astrology. This is to say that God put into motion a plan as big and as ancient as the universe in order to draw representatives from the nations to visit him when he became a human baby in Bethlehem. God intended to prove that he had a plan to draw all people to him, even if his own people ignored him. He did this, at the beginning of time, by arranging the galaxies, and the stars of the universe, and the courses of the planets in our solar system in such a way that, if there were people looking up for meaning in the stars, they would be able to see the sign of his coming written in the sky, and come to meet him.

There is a sense in which the birth of Jesus in Bethlehem was built into the very shape of the universe, the shape of the cosmos. This means that the drawing of the wise men to Bethlehem was also built into the shape of the cosmos, so that they would see it and come to Jesus.

Our lives in Christ, the way we come to faith in him, the way we persevere and grow in Christ are somehow cosmic events. They are not fragile things. They do not hang by a thread. They may seem to. But they don’t. We hang by something stronger than the universe.

There is something stronger than ourselves that brings us to Christ, and holds us in Christ. This is a great mystery, but it is the very thing Paul talks about in the eighth chapter of Romans, where he writes: “We know that in everything God works for good with those who love him, who are called according to his purpose.” (Romans 8:28)
We are sometimes afraid of the gospel; of the good news of God. We are afraid to share with others what we have seen and what we know. This is because we think we are handling something dangerous and fragile. In our living and sharing our faith we are afraid to be less than perfect, even though we think we know a God of grace, whose grace makes us strong, and whose grace ought to make us unafraid.

But that is part of the lesson of our journey. The problem is that we may very well arrive at our destination before we have truly learned this lesson.

What God did in Bethlehem, what God did on the cross and in the empty tomb are woven into the cosmos of which we are a part. What God has woven into the cosmos gets woven into us. Our coming to God in Christ and our life in God in Christ are part of a strong, cosmic thing that God has done.

That is what the wise men were journeying to see. That is what we actually believe. It is what the Bible teaches us to believe.

The wise men set out, following the star, knowing this; but, in the end, they found something completely unexpected and surprising. This is the nature of a journey with God; to find something that you never expected or understood.

It was wise, in a way, to seek the new king in the Jewish capital, in Jerusalem. It was wise to consult King Herod. It was wise to expect that kings would sire kings. But this was not God’s way or God’s wisdom.

What the wise men discovered in Bethlehem was the lowliness and the humility of the majesty of God. This was completely unexpected. It was an absolute surprise. God expressed his power by making his home with the poor, and the weak, and the needy.
The majesty of Herod was gloriously unjust to the people he ruled, and they suffered for it. The majesty of God was different from the majesty of Herod, or even of the emperor in Rome. The majesty of God chose to live among those who experienced the injustice of the great powers of this world.

When we experience our greatest need, our greatest loss, our greatest weakness, we are experiencing the very reason why God came into this world. We are experiencing the very reason God comes to us.

When we see another person in need, in loss, in weakness, that is when we see our calling to go to them with the lowliness and the humbleness of God in our heart, to be with them and help them however we can. We simply go to them, and love them with the love of the God we see in Bethlehem. That is where God’s majesty and power want to be.

The baby of Bethlehem is where we see the face of God. This is the secret of the gospel, the good news of Jesus. God is the God of the manger, and the carpenter’s shop. God is the God of the cross. God is the God of a tomb that was occupied but is now empty.

This is the true nature of God. He approaches what he has made when it is broken; and he is willing to be broken in order to mend it. This is the power of God.
We start our journey wanting to be dazzled. We find out that something entirely different matters.

These are the gifts that God in Jesus gave to the wise men. They are part of the gospel, and they are God’s gifts to us as well. These gifts make us fit for our journey, and they guide us to our destination.
There are other gifts.

Herod was an example of a false gift; the example of a life that seeks to be in control and in the spotlight. The wise men were a contrast to Herod right from the start. To go on a journey, until fairly modern times, was definitely to risk being out of control. To journey was to be prepared for what might happen, and yet knowing that you could never really be prepared, and never really be in control. To journey truly is to surrender your sovereignty in life. This is one of the gifts the wise men show to us.

All good things begin this way. A good marriage begins this way. So does parenthood. Any calling to serve God begins this way. The life of a child of God begins and ends with the surrender of your sovereignty: the end of your control. It begins and ends with the preparation of the lowliness and the humility and the certainty of the unexpected; the certainty of surprise.

Only the wise men went to Bethlehem, even though all Jerusalem knew what they were up to. The priests and the scholars of the law represented those who were closest to God, yet they were too afraid to take the chance of angering King Herod. They were right to be afraid, but they should have been more afraid not to go with the wise men.

The wise men had the same right as anyone else to be afraid, but they had the passion to go on. One of the gifts of the journey is to not let fear conquer your passion: your passion for life, your passion for others, and your passion for God. John in his first letter says this: “There is no fear in love, but perfect love casts out fear.” (1 John 4:18)

The final gift of the wise men was that they were willing to make a journey to find something that they expected to find, but they were also willing to find the unexpected.

They knew they would be changed by their journey. They did not know how they would be changed. They did not know what they would learn. But they were willing to go. And that is the faith of all the people of God.

When Isaiah says, “Nations will come to your light, and kings to the brightness of your dawn,” it means that it is God’s design for the whole world to join the journey that began when the Lord called Abraham to travel to a land that he would show him. (Genesis 12:1) Abraham is the prime example of what it means to be a person of faith; to travel to a place one can never know beforehand. This is the journey for every person of faith; including you and me.

As with the wise men, our journey to Jesus is a journey to something we do not fully understand as yet. But it is a journey to the dawn and to the light.

In a way, Jesus is like the star that shines the path. Only the fact is that Jesus is the way. Jesus, in his manger, and in his shop, and on his cross, and in his getting up out of the tomb is at work to build the mending and the setting to rights of the world.

Everything Jesus is, and everything he has done, is devoted to mending us and setting us right. This is the meaning of our journey, and this is what points the way to our destination. And this is a purpose we can share with everyone.

Expectant Believers: A Better Gift List

CHRISTMAS EVE

Scripture Readings: Isaiah 42:1-4; Matthew 1:18-25

There was a woman who finally gave up on her husband as a gift giver. Without fail, if he didn’t give her a household appliance, he would give her a power tool, or at least something that had an engine in it.

I’m not much better than that, as a gift giver. My problem, as a gift giver, is that I am always tempted to give the people I love gifts that I think they really should like, if only they knew better. I am tempted to give them gifts that are really for myself and not for them.

Joseph had a choice to make, as a gift giver. His gift was himself. That was given. The problem was for him to decide what kind of man, what kind of person, he would be for Mary, and for God. Would he really be a gift for Mary and for God, or would he prefer to be just a gift to himself?

Mary was pregnant, and Joseph had nothing to do with it. It must be said that Joseph didn’t really know Mary at all, even though they lived in the same small town. Except for within the home and the extended family, boys and girls/men and women had very little contact with each other. It was not allowed.

Matthew tells us that Joseph was a righteous man. Now, by “man”, Matthew means that Joseph was probably at least sixteen years old. Men usually married between the ages of sixteen and twenty; just as girls like Mary were sometimes betrothed as early as the age of twelve, and usually before they were sixteen. So both Joseph and Mary were young. And here they were, trying to decide what kind of gift they were supposed to be to each other.

The other thing about Joseph being a righteous man (or a righteous boy) is that being righteous meant doing the right thing. It meant, above all, obeying the commandments of God; following God’s rules. But doing right also meant doing what was right in the right way. Righteousness wasn’t defined only by the rules you followed, but by the kind of heart you showed was inside you, as you lived God’s way.

Since Mary was pregnant, and since pregnancy came about in a certain way, and since Joseph had nothing to do with this, the righteous thing, the right thing, for Joseph to do was for him to divorce Mary.

In their culture, engagement or betrothal could only be ended by death or divorce. That was the right thing to do; because such a pregnancy could only reasonably happen because of unfaithfulness, and there was nothing worse than unfaithfulness. And the result could be that Mary would be brought for judgment before the town elders and condemned to death by stoning.

But there was something much more involved in doing what was right. There was a line from the prophet Isaiah, saying that the Messiah, when he arrived, would not break a bruised reed or snuff out a smoldering wick. Joseph knew that something in the heart was important if one were to be truly righteous; truly right in the way you lived in this world and related to the people around you. There was gentleness and kindness. And so Joseph thought the right thing to do was to divorce Mary quietly, and perhaps send her off to live with relatives, so that she would not be put in danger for what she must have done.

What kind of decision could Joseph make so that he could do what was right, and be the kind of man, the kind of person, that Mary needed him to be, and that God expected him to be?

But there was something even more serious that this. Mary claimed that this child within her was more miraculous than any other baby in the world. This baby was a miracle of the Holy Spirit. This baby was the work of God. This baby was the very real presence of God in this world of ours.

Even if Joseph believed this: who else would believe it? People would believe the worst and act accordingly.

In the Old Testament, the Lord told the prophet Isaiah this about what kind of Savior his people were to expect: “A bruised reed he will not break, and a smoldering wick he will not snuff out. In faithfulness he will bring forth justice…” (Isaiah 42:3) This is what the Messiah would be like. This would be the essential nature, the core personality, of the king of the kingdom of God.

And this must have been the kind of Messiah that Joseph really hoped for. This must have been the kind of kingdom of God that Joseph really waited for. Because, this is what Joseph made himself to be for Mary. This was his gift to her and to God.

She was in danger of being stoned to death for something she had not done. If she was not killed, she would live a life of shame. She would never marry, because no good man would marry her. She and her child would always be followed by whispers, and gossip, and accusations, and insults, and mistreatment.

Mary and her child were in danger of being bruised reeds and smoldering wicks. In the village culture of Galilee they would be outsiders and outcasts all their lives.
Through an angel, God told Joseph not to be afraid to join them in their fate. “Joseph, son of David, do not be afraid to take Mary home as your wife.” (Matthew 1:20)

If Joseph listened to God, he would be joining Mary and the child in their shame. He would be claiming responsibility for this child: claiming this child as his own: and so Joseph would be advertising his personal irresponsibility for the rest of his life. That is what everyone would think, and they would treat him accordingly.

Whether or not Joseph was really afraid to take Mary home as his wife, and to take her shame upon himself, Joseph made the choice as if he were not afraid.
The result is that Joseph became a part of Mary’s world, and a part of the world of her child Jesus. He identified himself with her shame, and bore it himself, as long as he lived.

Don’t you think that this must be the greatest reason for treating Joseph as Jesus’ father? He really lay down his life for Mary and Jesus.

Our reading in Matthew tells us two things about Jesus. One is that Jesus fulfills a prophecy about God working through a child with the name Immanuel (which means God with us). (Matthew 1:23) The other thing is that Jesus’ name had a special meaning for him (even though it was a common name in his time and place). Jesus is a Greek version of the Hebrew name Joshua, which means “the Lord saves”. Matthew puts it this way, “for he will save his people from their sins.” (Matthew 1:21)

Joseph served his wife, served others, served his son, and served God by giving himself to them with all his heart. His deepest gift of himself to them was his willingness to simply be there with them, and just to be himself.

This is what God has done for us in Jesus. Whether he is in the manger, or in the carpenter shop, or on the cross, Jesus is “God with us”. He gives himself for us and this is our salvation. He gives us all that he is, just as he is, in himself.

And even though Mary had not sinned as everyone else thought, Joseph identified with her. Joseph acted as her forgiver, even when she had done nothing to forgive. In the manger, and in the carpenter shop, and on the cross; God in Christ identifies with our sins, and bears them for us. This is our salvation.

Christmas is about the gospel; about the God who is always with us and bears our sins in Jesus. Joseph is an invitation for us to bear the role of Jesus in this world.

In Joseph and in Jesus we are called to see the people and the situations that are the bruised reeds and the smoldering wicks in this world. In Jesus and in Joseph, we are called to be there, to simply be present, and to do our humble quiet work for them, even when the world misunderstands us. The Lord’s Supper is the Table of Jesus where he feeds us with himself. His giving himself to us enables us to have the grace to give ourselves to others and to the world for his sake, and so that his will may be done.

Expectant Believers: Unexpected Companions

Scripture Readings: Romans 15:1-13; Matthew 1:1-6

A wealthy woman was interviewing a prospective servant, and she asked, “Can you serve company?” The applicant said, “Yes ma’am. I can serve them both ways.” The woman was puzzled and she asked, “What do you mean, both ways.” “Ma’am, I can serve them so they’ll come again, or so they’ll stay away.” (From “My Little Salesman Truck Catalog” quoted in “Parables, Etc”, June ’88)

When my dad was a kid, his family had a guest room in the attic. It was a big, full, old fashioned attic, and (to all appearances) it was a nice enough room: but, just as you would expect in the attic of an old house, it was an oven in the summer and an ice box in the winter.

Sometimes, especially because those were depression years, they would have relatives who would want to come and stay for some time. If these were relatives that they really liked, they would make room for them in their own bedrooms on the second floor. If they were relatives that they didn’t like so well, they put them up in the guest room.

Both of the scriptures readings for this sermon teach us about the hospitality of God, and the truth is that Jesus is the hospitality of God. And the fact of the truth is that having Jesus makes us agents and representatives of the hospitality of God. And by “us” I mean both “us” as individuals, and “us” as a congregation.

You wouldn’t think that a genealogy would be about hospitality. Some people use their genealogy as a way of being inhospitable; as a way of setting themselves apart and above other people. The people of Jesus’ day did that, and anyone who traced their genealogy back to the great King David could be expected to use it to show others how noble and pure blooded they were.

But, even though Matthew gave Jesus’ genealogy going back to King David, and further back to Abraham, he put some things into that list of names that made it into the right kind of genealogy that could properly belong in a gospel. Matthew deliberately made some additions that sabotaged Jesus’ genealogy in order to make a point for the gospel.

Gospel means good news. And, here, the good news of the gospel is about the hospitality of God.

God takes us to himself, draws us to himself, as if he were embracing us. God takes us to himself even though we are really no better than strangers. He takes us to himself even though, sometimes, we are no better than enemies. God takes us to himself as if we were ruined, and obnoxious, and freeloading relatives; because that is what we really are. We are his estranged children: rebels and runaways.

We don’t even know how to live at home. We don’t have the skills to fit in. But God comes down in Jesus. And, down here, he does something to us that changes us. God becomes that baby in the manger; that carpenter on the roof; that wanderer on the highway; that convict on the cross; that unexpected conqueror of death. God has become all of that for us in order to draw us to himself and make us welcome.

Each of our own personal genealogies is a long line of generations of runaways from home, who have had (in their own minds) no proper idea of what the home where we belong is really like. Our idea of God’s home is all about clouds, and crowns, and thrones, and harps, and wings. We have no idea what makes God tick, or what being at home with him is like, until we really see God in Jesus.

The people who love genealogies often love glory and purity. But Matthew sabotaged Jesus’ genealogy to make it about grace. Genealogies are supposed to be lists of ancestors who make you look good. Jesus is the child who turns his genealogy upside down. The fact that he is in the family is what makes his motley crew, his rogue’s gallery, of ancestors look good.

Other relatives in Jesus’ family would look at their list of names and see (in their minds eye) portraits of distinguished patriarchs and royalty. But they could only succeed in doing that if they cherished a selective memory, a defective memory, of those ancestors.

The Bible is the most honest book in the world. It shows the truth that all those distinguished ancestors were sinners, even the best of them. “Sinner” means someone who misses the mark, who falls short, or aims too wide, or goes too far. An honest son or daughter of David’s genealogy would know this.

How did Matthew really sabotage the genealogy of Jesus and make it a history of grace? He did this by including women, but certain women in particular: Tamar, Rahab, Ruth, and Bathsheba (the wife of Uriah the Hittite).

Women, in general, were second class citizens. Putting their names in an official genealogy was simply not done. The people of Jesus’ time and place simply neglected to think that women were included in the great things that God does. They were just not ordinarily the people through whom you would expect to see God work.

The truth is that there are people through whom you do not expect God to work. But the genealogy in the Gospel of Matthew tells us that there are no such people. Every person is someone through whom God can be expected to work. To put these four women in the genealogy means that you can expect the unexpected, and the unlikely, from people. You can expect the most unpromising people to belong in very same fellowship as you do, because the grace of God can work just as well for them as it can for you.

Each of these four women is worth studying as an example of the grace of God. Tamar was a foreign girl (probably, possibly, a Canaanite). Her claim to fame is that she was victimized by the selfishness of the family she had married into: the family of Israel. Her devotion to what was right and what was just put the tribe of Israel to shame. (Genesis 38:1-26)

Rahab was a Canaanite woman who was probably the priestess of a fertility goddess. The Old Testament calls her a prostitute because that is what her ministry, as a pagan priestess, looked like to the Israelites, and would look like to us. But Rahab was converted. She changed. She became a believer in the Lord; and she became part of the people of Israel and an ancestor of Jesus. (Joshua 2:1-11; 6:22-25)

Ruth was a humble young woman of the people of Moab. She had nothing against her but the fact that she was a pagan outsider, and a stranger to the ways of God’s people. And, in spite of the odds, and in spite of those who tried to discourage her (like her own mother-in-law, in Ruth 1:8-18), she came inside God’s family by faith.

The wife of Uriah the Hittite was probably a Hittite woman too. But King David lusted after her, and had an affair with her, and had her husband killed so that he could marry her. She became living proof that one of the greatest of God’s people had done things that he could be thoroughly ashamed of. The greatest of God’s people was capable of doing things that would make others ashamed of him. (2 Samuel 11:1-12:10)

The presence of Tamar and Bathsheba sabotage the genealogy of Jesus, because they demonstrate that the holy people are not holy, in and of themselves. God’s people are sinners, and sometimes those who are on the outside of God’s people put God’s own people to shame.

The outsiders are the people who are wronged. It is the insiders, the holy people, who do the wronging.

If God’s people would only have the humility to know that they are often the one’s who deserve to be blamed, then they would have hope. Even now, if God’s people will recognize that they are sinners, who need to repent and receive new life from God, then lessons like Jesus’ genealogy will be a word of grace to them.

We know absolutely nothing about the grace of God until we know how much we need that grace. And we can never talk about the grace of God to others unless we know how much we need that grace. And we can never talk about the grace of God to others unless we allow God to change our lives by nourishing us with that grace.

And that is what Paul meant when he wrote, “Accept one another, then, just as Christ accepted you, in order to bring praise to God.” (Romans 15:7) Those who truly know the grace of God that has been given to us in Jesus can give that grace to others.
But more than that is true. Those who know the grace of God in Jesus are obliged to give that grace to others. Jesus accepted us to the praise of God. If we don’t accept others, then it is not to the praise of God. So you see it is pretty important, isn’t it?

“Accept one another.” Accept is a weak word to translate what Paul wrote in Greek. “Receive” would be a better word. “Welcome” would be even better yet. The Greek word, here, means something like “take to yourself” or “draw to yourself”.

The word “accept” can be such a weak, cold word. You can say: “I can accept them, but I don’t have to like them.” It’s true that, Biblically speaking, you don’t have to like other people; but, Biblically speaking, you do have to love them.
You have to receive them. You have to welcome them. You have to draw them to yourself. This is what God does with you in Christ. This is how we become the hands, and feet, and voices of Jesus, the hospitality of God.

The women who sabotaged Jesus’ genealogy were strangers and outsiders. They didn’t know the ways of God’s people. They didn’t have the same kind of history. They didn’t know the customs, or the vocabulary. They didn’t always know how to act or how to talk. But, by the grace of God, whether they were accepted or not, they belonged to God’s people. Perhaps they were never fully accepted in their life times, but they are accepted and welcomed in the story of Jesus.

People who haven’t been raised in the church have not learned our special language and our special ways. And we will seem as strange to them as they seem to us. They may even be able to see through some of our talk and some of our ways and see that there is a good amount of foolishness in us. They may see that we fret about the little things and that we are blind to the really important things. The only way to overcome this is by a disciplined commitment to the practice of welcome.

The acceptance and welcome of others in Jesus name is a holy discipline. You cannot keep the truth of grace in your heart unless you give grace. You cannot grow in your knowledge of grace unless you give grace. And being a Christian, being in Christ, is all about grace; from first to last.

It is not easy. It does not come naturally. It can only come supernaturally. This is what Paul understood, and what his words teach us, when he wrote, “May the God who gives endurance and encouragement give you a spirit of unity among yourselves, as you follow Christ Jesus, so that with one heart and mouth you may glorify the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ.” (Romans 15:5) Because we have no endurance in ourselves, it is our nature to raise barriers and create obstacles for others. It is the nature of Jesus and his Holy Spirit to sabotage those barriers, and tear at them until they come down.

It takes endurance and encouragement from God, through the power of the Holy Spirit, and through intense prayer, to accept and welcome others; which is nothing more than knowing that you and those outsiders really represent only one single thing; one great work of God in Christ.

That is where the spirit of unity comes from. This again is the hospitality that God gives us in Jesus.

This unity is the message of the genealogy of Jesus. It is not the case that some of us are the best, and some of us are the worst. We all have some of the best and the worst inside us. What gives us real meaning, in all our imperfection, is Jesus: just as he gave meaning to all those ancestors who went before him; all that motley crew, who were so mixed up with the best and the worst fighting inside their hearts.

Sooner or later each one of us will wonder what our life means. The meaning of our life is that we can know that our lives are taken up into the grace, and wisdom, and love of God in Jesus.

This is the message of Christmas. He took upon himself our human life, so that he could share his life with us and welcome us, and draw us to himself, and take us to himself: the ultimate hospitality.

This is the message of the Lord’s Table. Jesus is our host. The baby of Bethlehem is part of his gift to make us welcome. All that a baby asks for is our love and our embrace. The love this baby (who will grow up to die for us) gives us is the greatest nourishment and strength in the world. He gives us himself.

Expectant Believers: Unexpected Companions

Scripture Readings: Romans 15:1-13; Matthew 1:1-6

A wealthy woman was interviewing a prospective servant, and she asked, “Can you serve company?” The applicant said, “Yes ma’am. I can serve them both ways.” The woman was puzzled and she asked, “What do you mean, both ways.” “Ma’am, I can serve them so they’ll come again, or so they’ll stay away.” (From “My Little Salesman Truck Catalog” quoted in “Parables, Etc”, June ’88)

When my dad was a kid, his family had a guest room in the attic. It was a big, full, old fashioned attic, and (to all appearances) it was a nice enough room: but, just as you would expect in the attic of an old house, it was an oven in the summer and an ice box in the winter.

Sometimes, especially because those were depression years, they would have relatives who would want to come and stay for some time. If these were relatives that they really liked, they would make room for them in their own bedrooms on the second floor. If they were relatives that they didn’t like so well, they put them up in the guest room.

Both of the scriptures readings for this sermon teach us about the hospitality of God, and the truth is that Jesus is the hospitality of God. And the fact of the truth is that having Jesus makes us agents and representatives of the hospitality of God. And by “us” I mean both “us” as individuals, and “us” as a congregation.

You wouldn’t think that a genealogy would be about hospitality. Some people use their genealogy as a way of being inhospitable; as a way of setting themselves apart and above other people. The people of Jesus’ day did that, and anyone who traced their genealogy back to the great King David could be expected to use it to show others how noble and pure blooded they were.

But, even though Matthew gave Jesus’ genealogy going back to King David, and further back to Abraham, he put some things into that list of names that made it into the right kind of genealogy that could properly belong in a gospel. Matthew deliberately made some additions that sabotaged Jesus’ genealogy in order to make a point for the gospel.

Gospel means good news. And, here, the good news of the gospel is about the hospitality of God.

God takes us to himself, draws us to himself, as if he were embracing us. God takes us to himself even though we are really no better than strangers. He takes us to himself even though, sometimes, we are no better than enemies. God takes us to himself as if we were ruined, and obnoxious, and freeloading relatives; because that is what we really are. We are his estranged children: rebels and runaways.

We don’t even know how to live at home. We don’t have the skills to fit in. But God comes down in Jesus. And, down here, he does something to us that changes us. God becomes that baby in the manger; that carpenter on the roof; that wanderer on the highway; that convict on the cross; that unexpected conqueror of death. God has become all of that for us in order to draw us to himself and make us welcome.

Each of our own personal genealogies is a long line of generations of runaways from home, who have had (in their own minds) no proper idea of what the home where we belong is really like. Our idea of God’s home is all about clouds, and crowns, and thrones, and harps, and wings. We have no idea what makes God tick, or what being at home with him is like, until we really see God in Jesus.

The people who love genealogies often love glory and purity. But Matthew sabotaged Jesus’ genealogy to make it about grace. Genealogies are supposed to be lists of ancestors who make you look good. Jesus is the child who turns his genealogy upside down. The fact that he is in the family is what makes his motley crew, his rogue’s gallery, of ancestors look good.

Other relatives in Jesus’ family would look at their list of names and see (in their minds eye) portraits of distinguished patriarchs and royalty. But they do only do that if they cherished a selective memory, a defective memory, of those ancestors.

The Bible is the most honest book in the world. It shows the truth that all those distinguished ancestors were sinners, even the best of them. “Sinner” means someone who misses the mark, who falls short, or aims too wide, or goes too far. An honest son or daughter of David’s genealogy would know this.

How did Matthew really sabotage the genealogy of Jesus and make it a history of grace? He did this by including women, but certain women in particular: Tamar, Rahab, Ruth, and Bathsheba (the wife of Uriah the Hittite).

Women, in general, were second class citizens. Putting their names in an official genealogy was simply not done. The people of Jesus’ time and place simply neglected to think that women were included in the great things that God does. They were just not ordinarily the people through whom you would expect to see God work.

The truth is that there are people through whom you do not expect God to work. But the genealogy in the Gospel of Matthew tells us that there are no such people. Every person is someone through whom God can be expected to work. To put these four women in the genealogy means that you can expect the unexpected, and the unlikely, from people. You can expect the most unpromising people to belong in very same fellowship as you do, because the grace of God can work just as well for them as it can for you.

Each of these four women is worth studying as an example of the grace of God. Tamar was a foreign girl (probably, possibly, a Canaanite). Her claim to fame is that she was victimized by the selfishness of the family she had married into: the family of Israel. Her devotion to what was right and what was just put the tribe of Israel to shame. (Genesis 38:1-26)

Rahab was a Canaanite woman who was probably the priestess of a fertility goddess. The Old Testament calls her a prostitute because that is what her ministry, as a pagan priestess, looked like to the Israelites, and would look like to us. But Rahab was converted. She changed. She became a believer in the Lord; and she became part of the people of Israel and an ancestor of Jesus. (Joshua 2:1-11; 6:22-25)

Ruth was a humble young woman of the people of Moab. She had nothing against her but the fact that she was a pagan outsider, and a stranger to the ways of God’s people. And, in spite of the odds, and in spite of those who tried to discourage her (like her own mother-in-law, in Ruth 1:8-18), she came inside God’s family by faith.

The wife of Uriah the Hittite was probably a Hittite woman too. But King David lusted after her, and had an affair with her, and had her husband killed so that he could marry her. She became living proof that one of the greatest of God’s people had done things that he could be thoroughly ashamed of. The greatest of God’s people was capable of doing things that would make others ashamed of him. (2 Samuel 11:1-12:10)

The presence of Tamar and Bathsheba sabotage the genealogy of Jesus, because they demonstrate that the holy people are not holy, in and of themselves. God’s people are sinners, and sometimes those who are on the outside of God’s people put God’s own people to shame.

The outsiders are the people who are wronged. It is the insiders, the holy people, who do the wronging.

If God’s people would only have the humility to know that they are often the one’s who deserve to be blamed, then they would have hope. Even now, if God’s people will recognize that they are sinners, who need to repent and receive new life from God, then lessons like Jesus’ genealogy will be a word of grace to them.

We know absolutely nothing about the grace of God until we know how much we need that grace. And we can never talk about the grace of God to others unless we know how much we need that grace. And we can never talk about the grace of God to others unless we allow God to change our lives by nourishing us with that grace.

And that is what Paul meant when he wrote, “Accept one another, then, just as Christ accepted you, in order to bring praise to God.” (Romans 15:7) Those who truly know the grace of God that has been given to us in Jesus can give that grace to others.
But more than that is true. Those who know the grace of God in Jesus are obliged to give that grace to others. Jesus accepted us to the praise of God. If we don’t accept others, then it is not to the praise of God. So you see it is pretty important, isn’t it?

“Accept one another.” Accept is a weak word to translate what Paul wrote in Greek. “Receive” would be a better word. “Welcome” would be even better yet. The Greek word, here, means something like “take to yourself” or “draw to yourself”.

The word “accept” can be such a weak, cold word. You can say: “I can accept them, but I don’t have to like them.” It’s true that, Biblically speaking, you don’t have to like other people; but, Biblically speaking, you do have to love them.
You have to receive them. You have to welcome them. You have to draw them to yourself. This is what God does with you in Christ. This is how we become the hands, and feet, and voices of Jesus, the hospitality of God.

The women who sabotaged Jesus’ genealogy were strangers and outsiders. They didn’t know the ways of God’s people. They didn’t have the same kind of history. They didn’t know the customs, or the vocabulary. They didn’t always know how to act or how to talk. But, by the grace of God, whether they were accepted or not, they belonged to God’s people. Perhaps they were never fully accepted in their life times, but they are accepted and welcomed in the story of Jesus.

People who haven’t been raised in the church have not learned our special language and our special ways. And we will seem as strange to them as they seem to us. They may even be able to see through some of our talk and some of our ways and see that there is a good amount of foolishness in us. They may see that we fret about the little things and that we are blind to the really important things. The only way to overcome this is by a disciplined commitment to the practice of welcome.

The acceptance and welcome of others in Jesus name is a holy discipline. You cannot keep the truth of grace in your heart unless you give grace. You cannot grow in your knowledge of grace unless you give grace. And being a Christian, being in Christ, is all about grace; from first to last.

It is not easy. It does not come naturally. It can only come supernaturally. This is what Paul understood, and what his words teach us, when he wrote, “May the God who gives endurance and encouragement give you a spirit of unity among yourselves, as you follow Christ Jesus, so that with one heart and mouth you may glorify the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ.” (Romans 15:5) Because we have no endurance in ourselves, it is our nature to raise barriers and create obstacles for others. It is the nature of Jesus and his Holy Spirit to sabotage those barriers, and tear at them until they come down.

It takes endurance and encouragement from God, through the power of the Holy Spirit, and through intense prayer, to accept and welcome others; which is nothing more than knowing that you and those outsiders really represent only one single thing; one great work of God in Christ.

That is where the spirit of unity comes from. This again is the hospitality that God gives us in Jesus.

This unity is the message of the genealogy of Jesus. It is not the case that some of us are the best, and some of us are the worst. We all have some of the best and the worst inside us. What gives us real meaning, in all our imperfection, is Jesus: just as he gave meaning to all those ancestors who went before him; all that motley crew, who were so mixed up with the best and the worst fighting inside their hearts.

Sooner or later each one of us will wonder what our life means. The meaning of our life is that we can know that our lives are taken up into the grace, and wisdom, and love of God in Jesus.

This is the message of Christmas. He took upon himself our human life, so that he could share his life with us and welcome us, and draw us to himself, and take us to himself: the ultimate hospitality.

This is the message of the Lord’s Table. Jesus is our host. The baby of Bethlehem is part of his gift to make us welcome. All that a baby asks for is our love and our embrace. The love this baby (who will grow up to die for us) gives us is the greatest nourishment and strength in the world. He gives us himself.

Expectant Believers: Expect to Wait

Scripture Readings: Titus 2:11-14; Matthew 1:1-17

A pastor, and his wife, and their little girl were making the long drive to see grandpa and grandma for Christmas. They had been on the road for a long time, already, when the daughter asked the inevitable question: “Daddy, are we almost there yet?” Her father said, “No, honey, we still have 200 miles to go. It will take us at least three hours to get there.” The little girl couldn’t really comprehend what three hours felt like, so she leaned forward as far as she could and whispered to her mother, “Mommy, is that as long as one of Daddy’s sermons?” (Daniel Koehler; “Parables, Etc” July 1990)

It can be hard to wait. But one of the most important things we do in life is waiting. It is one of the holiest things we do.

One of the hardest things of all, about life, to understand and appreciate is the gift of waiting. We don’t understand the meaning of waiting; and so we usually get it wrong.

We can hardly wait. We can hardly wait till we are ten and have an age in double digits. We can hardly wait till we are thirteen, and be a teenager. We can hardly wait until we are sixteen and have our driver’s license. We can hardly wait till we graduate from high school. I won’t even go on to some of the other things we can hardly wait for.

Both of the scriptures we have read, this morning, are (among other things) about waiting.

The first chapter of the Gospel of Matthew tells us about nearly two thousand years of waiting. There was a promise that God made to Abraham, the first ancestor of the people of God and the people of Israel.

The promise is found in the twelfth Chapter of Genesis, and we can summarize it like this: the Lord said, “I will bless you, and you will be a blessing. By you all of the families of the earth will bless themselves.” (Genesis 12:1-3) “By you all the families of the earth will bless themselves.”

The promise was about one of Abraham’s offspring. One of Abraham’s offspring would bring blessing; would bring grace into the world; would change the hearts, and minds, and lives of all the families of the earth. It would be the greatest of all gifts.

Someone born of Abraham would bring something different, something entirely new into the world. Someone would restore the ruined image of God in human life, and in human relationships, so completely that there would be nothing else to call it but a new creation. It would be like being born again.

Paul believed this. And he wrote of it this way in his letter to Titus: “For the grace of God that brings salvation has appeared to all men.” (Titus 2:11)
We believe the good news is that Jesus brought this new life to his creation. Matthew believed this, and so he called Jesus the son of Abraham. Matthew was careful to trace the ancestry, to trace the genealogy, of this promise across the centuries from Abraham to Jesus.

Here is a promise that was two thousand years and over forty generations in the making, or in the keeping. That is one long, long wait.

Yet the wait is not over. For all we know, it has just begun.

Paul said that the grace of God teaches us the meaning of waiting. He said to Titus that the grace we have been given in Jesus: “teaches us to say “No” to ungodliness and worldly passions, and to live self-controlled, upright, and godly lives in this present age, while we wait for the blessed hope – the glorious appearing of our great God and Savior Jesus Christ who gave himself for us to redeem us from all wickedness, and to purify for himself a people that are his very own, eager to do what is good.” (Titus 2:12-14)

The waiting that God’s people have been doing, since the first appearance of the grace of God in Jesus, has been going on for almost two thousand years and counting.
Both Matthew and Paul teach us that waiting for God to work is not supposed to be passive, and the time spent in waiting is not supposed to be empty. What we call waiting, God calls preparation.

The waiting that Matthew and Paul describe was preparation for grace. It was preparation for a gift of something that would be saving, and enabling, and liberating; something transforming and recreating.

The word advent means coming. It relates to the coming of God, in Jesus, as the baby of Bethlehem. It relates to the coming of God, in Jesus, in his return to rule when this age is complete.

When that happens, we, and the creation of which we are a part, will be ruled by the one who died for us on the cross. Our celebration of Christmas relates to all of this.

But the peculiar thing about the season of Advent is that it is about waiting, and learning how to wait, for this coming. And this is completely contrary to how we want to live: because we live in a world that is the devoted enemy of all waiting. We live in an age of fast travel, and fast food, and high speed access to the internet, and instant oatmeal, and the un-deferred gratification of our strongest desires.

God’s ways of working are opposite to this. There are so many ways that living life to the fullest, and living live at its highest, requires us to understand the meaning and holiness of active and productive waiting.

It is as simple as vegetables and dessert. Children want to eat their ice cream before they eat their vegetables. They don’t want to wait. But a life where ice cream always comes first would probably become a life without vegetables at all, and a life without vegetables, at all, would probably become a life of diabetes.

It would not be a good life at all. A life where ice cream came first would not be a healthy life. And one would never really understand the true meaning of ice cream without learning to eat your vegetables first.

I was talking to a member of our high school football team. Even though the football season is over, for us, the team is waiting for the next season.

They are waiting by weightlifting, which is one of the most boring and tedious things you can do. And the coaches want the team to do the most boring and tedious thing until it hurts. To tell you the truth, when I was a kid, I would never have done it; but this is the kind of active and productive waiting that is called preparation.

I want to read you something I found by an author named Paula Gooder. She wrote something she learned about waiting when she was pregnant with her first child. She wrote: “It was only when I was pregnant with my first child that I realized I had completely misunderstood what waiting was about. I have a very low boredom threshold and, consequently, am bad at waiting. Yet no one who is expecting a child wants the waiting to end and the baby to come early – that can only spell heartache. I began to discover that waiting is not just about passing time but that it has a deep and lasting value in and of itself.

“Waiting can be a nurturing time. Pregnant waiting is a profoundly creative act, involving a slow growth to new life. This kind of waiting may appear passive externally but internally it consists of never-ending action and is a helpful analogy for the kind of waiting that Advent requires.” (In “Christianity Today”; “The Meaning is in the Waiting: the Spirit of Advent”; p 64)

Even children who would rather eat their ice cream first can show us some of the holiness of waiting. It comes out as Christmas approaches. They learn to count the days, and look forward to each day as the nearing of grace and (of course) the nearing of presents. They want to be part of things. They want to help make things good for others. They can be taught to care about those who don’t have as much as they do. They learn to enjoy the planning and giving of gifts. They want to create things for the joy and happiness of others. This is the waiting of a life that is lived to the fullest.

It’s true that they may even get into the “naughty or nice” syndrome, which is not about grace at all. But that (at least) is about an understanding of what brings pleasure to others.

In airports you can watch families waiting and learn from them; especially from parents of small children. Waiting in an airport is not easy for anyone, especially when flights get delayed by the weather. But you learn about waiting by watching parents help their children to wait. Sometimes it’s not a pretty sight; but some parents are really heroes. You see their love in action and you know that their children will be blest by this.

Paul says that grace teaches us to wait by learning godliness, and this is an interesting word. The Greek word that gets translated as “godliness” would be more clearly translated as “reverence”. It is like a windmill that is designed to catch the wind by pointing toward it. Godliness is a God-pointed life, but it isn’t blind to everything but God.

A good husband sees his wife just as she is in God, and he points his life toward her; and she does the same to him. Parents and teachers see children just as they are in God, and they point their lives toward to them, and give them the best nurture that they can. Those who have something to share see those who are in need just as they are in God, and they point their lives towards them with the best gifts and help that they are able to give. Those who know the Lord, see those who don’t just as they are in God, and they point their lives toward them with the love of God. Reverence causes you to live toward everything and toward everyone in a God-pointed direction.

Godliness, or reverence, is a way of responding to grace. It is also a way of waiting and preparation for grace. It is a transformation that gives you a different life because you know what it means to have received grace in the first place. It is also true that this grace-shaped kind of life opens your eyes and enables you to see more of the grace of God that is reaching out to you. And, so, it makes you receptive to grace.

“For the grace of God that brings salvation has appeared to all people.” Christmas celebrates Jesus, who is the incarnation of God (which means God in the flesh; God becoming human). Jesus is God with us; God pointing his life toward us and giving us grace. And here, again, we see the holiness of waiting.

God didn’t just wave his hand and say, “I give you grace. I give you my forgiveness and my life-changing love.” Maybe the truth is that no such grace can be easily and quickly give. Maybe true grace always takes time.

God used time to give us a holy grace. God used his baby face, his sleeping in a manger, his family’s escape as refugees from a murderous king. God used the silent/normal years of his boyhood and his work as a carpenter. God used the three years of his wandering life on the road, his healing of the sick and his feeding of the hungry. God used his time in the process of the injustice of his arrest, and his being mocked, and his being beaten. God used his time in the process of and his conviction, his execution, his death, and his resurrection. All this took time and none of that time was wasted.

This is God at work. He took time to point his life toward us and give us grace. And so our time now never needs to be never passive, empty waiting. All time is grace to prepare us for grace.

There is plenty to do, plenty to think about, plenty to pay attention to, even when we think we are just waiting and wasting our time. God gives us the gift of time, and that is good for us, because that is grace.