Category Archives: Lectionary

Massacres in Our Midst, Matthew 2:13-23

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We pay little attention to the Massacre of the Innocents in modern Christianity.

The Revised Common Lectionary lists the verses only once in the three-year cycle— in Year A on the first Sunday after Christmas. That makes it easy to miss unless you’re one of the few attending church that day and it is read and/or preached on.

Of course, pastors like me often avoid preaching on it. After all, today’s world already has enough misery for everyone to get their fair share. And many of us are reluctant to emphasize the evil, pain and suffering in these verses during the Christmas season.

However, I am not preaching much anymore and found that these verses would not leave me alone this year. They have followed me around since Christmas Day.

After all, the massacre of innocents conjures up all too many memories from recent years—Columbine, Newtown, Parkland, and Uvalde, to name a few. At the same time, I wonder how many more might happen and then pray that they don’t.

Also, for some reason, perhaps God sent, I’ve imagined several times Roman troops tramping up to huts, their armor clanging as they walked, and the people inside growing ever more afraid as the threatening sound neared them.

The troops would kick the door open, enter, look for a child of the “right” age and summarily kill him as parents and family looked upon it and shrieked in horror. The troops would then leave the stricken family with the lifeless, bloodied child.

It all makes me want to wince and look away.

But I shouldn’t. Probably, nobody should.

Instead, perhaps we can learn something from the early church, which specified a feast day to remember these unnamed children, the first martyrs for Jesus Christ. The day still appears on many liturgical calendars, although relatively few Christians are aware of such things.

If we do take time to honor their deaths, we might also remember the truth that they had to die for Jesus both to live and to enter the fulness of his ministry. We might also add a prayer of thanks for their lives.

In saying this, I want to be mindful of most Herodian scholars who agree it is likely that this event never took place.

The thing is, it has taken place, time and again, and it still takes place whenever anyone threatens the power of a tyrant or whenever the power of Jesus Christ threatens worldly power.

Finally, at least for us in the United States, we might also supplement our commemoration of the innocents by joining in the fight to save our country from the grip of the gun culture.

We should not continue our complicity in massacres of innocents.

An Open Heart, Luke 1-20

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Even as we join with Christians all over the world in celebrating Jesus’ birth we might stop and ponder for a moment that his was one of the lowliest and most obscure of births possible.

God didn’t choose to come to earth fully grown and clothed with great power. God did not come to earth as a Caesar of Rome or King of England or President of the United States. No. Instead, God chose to come to earth as one of the most vulnerable of all creatures, a newborn child.

And God chose to not to come to earth in a place of great power like ancient Rome or London in the heyday of the British Empire or New York City in today’s world dominated by financial power. No. Emmanuel—God on earth—came to earth in one of the most backwater of all places, a poor, out-of-the way village in an insignificant province in the Roman Empire.

And what a set of parents our Lord had! His mother was a peasant and an adolescent about 13 years old. In keeping with the overall theme of humility, she hailed from a remote, hardscrabble village.

His father-to-be matched those modest circumstances. He was not really a skilled carpenter but someone more like a carpenter’s apprentice—and one who was reluctant to marry a blushing bride who was already pregnant with a child he did not help to conceive.

It is hard to imagine set of more humble circumstances for someone’s birth. But God was not done in emphasizing the lowliness and poverty of this joining of heaven to earth.

When the labor pains started and the child was ready to come, the small family was in a stable with barnyard animals as witnesses. There was no room for them anywhere else.

And we only think he was placed in a nice little cradle that we refer to as a manger. Mangers went by another name— food trough. God came to earth and was laid. . . in a food trough.

More signs of lowliness and humility were to come.

The first to celebrate the baby’s birth with the happy parents were a group of shepherds. As our Savior would later experience in his life, shepherds often had no real place to lay their heads. By the nature of their work, they had to sleep with their sheep.

And they weren’t appreciated by the good religious folk of the day. You see, it was the rare shepherd who could conform to Jewish law. It was just impractical. After all, it was a must for shepherds to work on the Sabbath, and they also found many of the other 500 or so laws hard to observe out in the wilderness.

Jesus had one of the lowliest, most obscure births ever. It was as if God was making a point. If heaven was going to meet earth, it would be in the most unimaginable way possible. . . part of and among people who had no status, wealth or power, but who instead were the belittled, rejected, reviled, and marginalized of their day.

Can we just ignore these facts? I don’t think so. They seem to add up to something important. After all, the circumstances of Jesus’ birth led to the circumstances of his life, ministry, death, and resurrection. They must affect what we think, say and do in our own lives.

Fortunately, the verses tonight do at least hint at a path for us to follow.

The angel made quite an entrance in appearing to the shepherds that night. Luke tells us that the shepherds were living in the fields, keeping watch over the flock by night. Then, he says, the angel stood before them, and the glory of the Lord shone around them, and they were terrified.

The angel said, “Do not be afraid, for see—I am bringing you good news of great joy for all people; to you is born this day in the city of David a Savior, who is the Messiah. . .”

There is one thing about these words that really interested me this year and that might help point the way for us.

It is in that phrase “. . . to you is born this day. . .” Those two words “this day” are really better translated as “today.”

Today. To all is born today. To us is born today. To you is born today. . . a Savior, who is Christ the Lord.

Luke knew what he was doing. He wrote the Greek word for “today.” He wrote a word that is always fresh and new, a word that applies in all times and places and to all people. Today, a savior is born to us.

It has often been noted that God gives God’s own self at Christmas. That happens again today.

May this be a gift that we—that you—accept.

But Jesus’ birth bursts with more meaning. One of them is that the circumstances of his birth shows that God’s heart is open to all people.

As we accept the gift of Christ, may we truly determine to also keep our hearts open to God’s people.

Amen.

Making a House of Prayer

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Matthew 21:12-17

12Then Jesus entered the temple and drove out all who were selling and buying in the temple, and he overturned the tables of the money-changers and the seats of those who sold doves. 13He said to them, ‘It is written,
“My house shall be called a house of prayer”;
   but you are making it a den of robbers.’

14The blind and the lame came to him in the temple, and he cured them. 15But when the chief priests and the scribes saw the amazing things that he did, and heard the children crying out in the temple, ‘Hosanna to the Son of David’, they became angry 16and said to him, ‘Do you hear what these are saying?’ Jesus said to them, ‘Yes; have you never read,
“Out of the mouths of infants and nursing babies
   you have prepared praise for yourself”?’
17He left them, went out of the city to Bethany, and spent the night there.

It is humbling to try to describe that last week in Jerusalem, the final days of Jesus’ mortal life. Things of far greater import occurred than I can understand. However, perhaps two of the most important things for us to know are that God’s radical grace was always at work and that His Son was resolute and courageous throughout, unwavering in living out his call.

It was a week when the powers of heaven and earth engaged in a great cosmic war. Roman forces and Jewish leaders were battling against the Forces of Heaven in trying to kill the Son of God. For a few days or weeks, they may have thought that they did. But Jesus was alive. He had risen. And, in not too many years, the Temple was destroyed and the Jewish leaders killed or scattered. Later still, Jesus came to conquer the Roman Empire around 325 A.D. when the Emperor Constantine came to call him “Lord.” God’s radical grace had triumphed.

Matthew tells us that Jesus went to the Temple immediately after entering Jerusalem that week. The Temple was the center of action for most of the week, but what unfolded that day is one of the better-known gospel stories. Jesus entered the Temple courtyard and immediately drove out all the money-changers and all who were buying and selling there. At the same time, he overturned their tables and chairs. It was quite a scene, with Jesus knocking over furniture and scattering the offenders!

Thousands of pages of sermons and commentaries have been written about on this drama. But, if we read on, we discover that more was at stake than the buying and selling of money and doves. The Temple’s very purpose was at stake. This also meant that the doing of God’s will on earth was at stake.

Turn your eyes to what happened following the courtyard drama: the blind and lame came into the Temple and Jesus cured them. Then, little children cried out, “Hosanna to the Son of David.” They were shouting out to the Messiah, saying that the One who was supposed to come had come.

Did you notice that it was at this point that the chief priests and scribes became angry and the tension between them and Jesus increased? They did not like what he was doing or the recognition he was given. He was threatening their standing in the culture.

Jesus had his reasons. You see, about twenty years earlier, the sole function of the Temple was to be the center of Jewish worship, as it had been for centuries. However, Rome then ordered the chief priests to make the Temple the center and collection place of all taxes, both Roman and local. Soon, the chief priest compounded the problem by setting up shop in the Temple courtyard, exchanging foreign currency and also selling animals for Temple sacrifices. This, in turn, undercut businesses on the Mount of Olives that had been doing the same thing for years. With all that money sloshing about the Temple, corruption followed. The Temple became a place not of worship, but a “den of thieves.”

The Temple’s very purpose had been perverted. God’s will had been denied. Jesus had come to restore the Temple’s purpose and do God’s will.

Moreover, there is evidence that the blind and lame—and other disabled, unwanted or rejected Jews—were not welcome in the Temple. Now, Jesus not only welcomed them but also healed them. At the same time, children were of little value back then. Now, they were both welcome and were praising Christ.

Yes, Jesus had come to restore the Temple to be a “house of prayer for all peoples” and a place not only of prayer but of grace and healing and, dare we say, love for all humankind. And, also a place where great truths, divine truths were declared by the innocent and uncorrupted, “Hosanna to the Son of David.”

Prayer: Holy and Almighty God, we are awed by your sacred purpose and your relentless power. Just as Jesus was true to his calling, help us be true to our calling. May our churches—and our individual bodies, souls, hearts and minds—be places where your will is done, your people are loved and valued and your great and eternal truths are declared and cherished, all to the glory of your name. Amen.

Preaching through the Bible

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This year, I’m trying out an old method of preaching which is new to me. In the past, I’ve preached topical sermon series or followed the common lectionary. This year, I’m using the lectio continua method.

The gist of this is to deliver a continuing line of sermons so that the verses preached about one week follow consecutively from the verses addressed the prior week. The most common example of this probably is preaching from consecutive groupings of scripture in the same book, e.g. a continuing series of sermons from Romans. My plan varies from this a bit, in that I hope to read and preach through the entire Bible in one year, with each sermon based on the verses we’ve read that week.

My foundation for this is the reading plan described in J. Ellsworth Kalas’ book, “The Grand Sweep.” The advantage of his plan is that it not only contains daily readings, but it also has a daily devotional on each day’s reading and a discussion at each week’s end on themes and questions raised over the week.

Our first week took us from creation to Abram’s response to God’s call, Genesis 1-13. It also included Psalms 1-11. My cup overflowed as to possible topics. Unfortunately, because of the perceived need to discuss some preliminary issues, my sermon fell well short of doing justice to any subject. Still, I’m excited about the year and the possibilities an intensive, intentional scriptural approach give for individual and congregational growth.

I hope to blog about my experiences and include the sermon each week. I plan to post the first sermon tomorrow.

However, what struck me most about our first week’s readings is something I didn’t address this past Sunday—how relevant the Bible is today. It’s striking how many issues raised by the first week’s readings remain ripe thousands of years later. The ones that leaped out most to me were our:

  1. relationship to the environment and creation (Genesis 1:26-28;
  2. treatment of each other (Genesis 4:1-9);
  3. tendencies toward violence (Genesis 4:1-9, 22-23); and,
  4. continual turning away from God and inability to follow God’s will (Genesis 3; 4:1-9, 22-23; 6:5-13; and, 13:7)

Each of these is worth a few weeks of their own!

Is Anything Too Wonderful for God?

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This is my sermon for last week. I love preaching from Genesis because it shows God involved in the nitty-gritty of life and does not avoid dealing with the flaws and sins of its protagonists. These particular verses also speak to my two small congregations because almost all us are over 60 and well-acquainted with disappointment.

Genesis 18: 1-15; 21:1-7
“Is Anything Too Wonderful for God?”

Our faith can slip away from us at any age, but surely the challenges of aging are among the most daunting of threats.

This is especially so if we are forced to look hard at or to go through the experience of caring for someone ravaged by Alzheimer’s, some other form of dementia or by the many other physical or mental maladies that can arise.

At those times, caregivers, loved ones and, of course, those afflicted by the illness, can almost feel their spirits weaken and, at times, their faith ebb.

Before we look at these verses about the two old codgers Abraham and Sarah, we might first consider the life of one of the most unique seniors I have seen.

hawkinsmain

Julia Hawkins, 101 year old sprinter

This week, the Washington Post told the story of Julia Hawkins, who lives down in Baton Rouge, La.

It begins by explaining that Ms. Hawkins is a specialist in running sprints and is in training for competition in the 50 meter dash.

And then it informs us that Ms. Hawkins is 101 years old, and that she just started running last year.

She runs the 50 meters in just over 19 seconds, which oddly enough is about the time it takes me to get from my recliner to the refrigerator.

But, friends, the story of Ms. Hawkins is one that tells us to never lose hope at any age over anything.

Unfortunately, most of us do.

Let’s pray.

Startle us, O God, with your truth and power and grant us the gift of your life-giving presence. As we hear your word read and proclaimed, we pray that you touch our hearts with your grace; strengthen our spirits with your love; and, deepen our faith with your word. We pray these things in the name of our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ. Amen.

Abraham was 100 years old and Sarah nearly that old when the Lord visited them that day.

God was bringing them a message: they would be blessed with the birth of a child.

I’m 64 and Maurie’s 57.

She might be happy if God gave us that news, but I would tell him, “Lord, no. Please no. Why are you punishing me? What have I done?”

But when Abraham and Sarah were at the age they should be moving into a nursing home and not buying a crib, God told them to get ready for a child.

Surprisingly, at least to me, they wanted a child.

We need to put God’s promise that day in perspective to appreciate what Abraham and Sarah felt at the birth announcement.

You see, God had promised a child to Abraham and Sarah well before that day.

As a matter-of-fact, God had first made the promise 25 years earlier.

Indeed, if you pull out your bible and read Genesis 17, right before our verses begin for today, God appeared to Abraham and made the promise again.

Let’s look at a little background to that day. At that time, and for the first 100 years of his life, the man we know as Abraham was named and called Abram.

But, in Chapter 17, God came to Abram and told him that his life was about to change.

First, he told Abram that he would have a new name, Abraham, which means “father of many nations.”

Second, God told the newly-named Abraham that his wife Sarai would also have a new name.

God said that Sarai would henceforth be known as Sarah, because she would be mother of many nations.

Third, God said, “And, Abraham, you need to get a baby room ready because Sarah will soon bear a son.”

When he heard that news, Abraham could not believe it.

He thought it was a knee-slapper of a joke.

Genesis 17:17 says that he fell facedown and started laughing.

He thought to himself, “Good grief, Lord, I’m 100 and Sarah about as old as I am. That ain’t gonna happen. We are too old.”

God said, “Oh, it is going to happen and you need to name your son Isaac.”

Abraham and the AngelsRembrandt, 1630

“Abraham and the Angels” Rembrandt, c. 1630 (Sarah is visible in the left foreground)

After a bit of time passed, a few days or weeks or months, the Bible is not clear, who should come pay the two old geezers a visit but the Lord and two unnamed men.

Abraham was thrilled to see them.

He was sitting at the entrance to his tent when the three appeared.

When he saw them, he ran over, greeted them, and asked them to rest under the tree while he got them some food and water.

They rested under the big oaks while Abraham ran to his tent and told Sarah to start whipping up some bread.

He told her to do it with 36 lbs. of flour.

Sarah probably went with a bit less.

Then he went outside and ordered a servant to prepare a calf.

He returned to God and the two others with a feast.

The visitors chowed down.

It was then that one of the men told him, “I’ll be back next year and by then Sarah will have a son.”

Sarah was old, but not hard of hearing.

She was listening in to the conversation, kind of like a FBI wiretap except in person.

She heard the news of her having a son and she laughed and thought to herself, “After I am worn out and my husband old, will I now have this pleasure.”

I read that word “pleasure” in verse 12 and thought “Pleasure? You’re 99! You already have your share of aches and pains.

But, friends, you might know how she felt because maybe something like what happened to her has happened to you.

Have you ever wanted something your whole life and never gotten it?

Think about that.

Is there something you always wanted to do but never did?

Or was there something you yearned for and, as the years passed, it just seemed it would never be and finally your dream just went into the place where we stuff things we want to ignore.

I have, but it was not to be.

Father’s Day is a bittersweet day for me.

The children who I talk about, they are not mine.

They are Maurie’s.

I love them and claim them as my own, but I never had any children.

So, in the back of my mind, there is something missing in my life, something I wanted to do but never did and someone whom I wanted to be but never was, a father.

Sarah was like that.

She had wanted a child, but had never had one.

It was worse for Sarah, though, because back in those days, a woman was supposed to have children.

A woman’s worth was based on having children.

People believed that a woman without a child was . . . less.

Not quite as good.

Sarah carried that burden of shame with her for months and weeks and years and decades.

Oh, how she had wanted a child and especially a son, a son surely for Abraham, someone to carry on the family name and the family traditions.

Worse, she had been remembering God’s promises for 25 years.

You can imagine her praying, “When, God, when?” until she could pray no more and hope no more and finally tucked her dream and desire into that compartment in her mind.

So that day, when she heard the man talking about her having a child, she laughed.

There are different types of laughs.

There are belly laughs, that happen when something strikes you as hilarious and the laughter erupts and starts down your belly and flows out of you.

There are chuckles at small jokes or things that happen during the day.

There are giggles like small children might have when they have put one over on mom or dad.

I think Sarah’s laugh was more like a snort, a “no way, no how,” sarcastic kind of laugh.

Like, “Hah, no way.”

And, with that snort, Sarah also showed her doubt about God.

God had promised. God had failed. Now, she was too old. So, “Hah, no way.”

When God heard that laugh, he turned to Abraham, apparently kind of surprised.

God said, “Why did she laugh? Is anything too wonderful for the Lord?”

Then he said, “I will return to you next year and she will have a son.”

Remember now that first Abraham laughed at God’s promise.

Then, Sarah laughed, too.

Both had given up on God and doubted God and lost any hope that had that the promised would be fulfilled.

Of course, all of us are like Sarah and all of us are Abraham.

We’ve lived with pain, barrenness, bitterness.

Who among us, at our age, has not felt crushing loss or devastating disappointment?

Like them, we wonder if God heard our prayers, or if he will answer them or maybe, it enough time has passed for us, we have given up and locked into that compartment.

So, we forget about it ever happening or ever receiving an answer.

In such cases, maybe a little chink is knocked off our faith.

But, Abraham and Sarah still had faith or at least kept some form of faith alive.

Clearly, they still believed in God and were surely in direct relationship that day.

You note that twice in these verses, Abraham called himself God’s “servant.”

Note, too, that God didn’t punish any doubt that they had.

You see, for Sarah and Abraham, the unbelievable happened.

Sarah had a child. God’s promise had come true.

The story of Abraham and Sarah is a story of two people, parents of us all, moving from hopelessness to hope and from hope to fulfillment.

But, there is something in these events for us.

Friends, however down or doubtful you may get about God, hold on to your faith and to your hope.

Understand, it is a mistake to base our faith in God upon fulfillment of our desires, dreams, wants or prayers.

Instead, we need to keep our faith in God open to the amazing and surprising grace of God, a grace that can come to us in the most unexpected of ways.

And, we need to keep remain aware of the daily graces of God that we that we take for granted.

Even the beating of your heart and the breathing of your lungs are signs of that grace, as are your food, shelter, clothing, health and the rising of the sun and breezes in the air.

Our faith in God’s grace, surprising and daily and constant, needs to wrap itself around our doubt and disappointments and say that it is okay and God is still with us.

And remember that our God is full of power and surprises.

God raises the dead.

God brought the Hebrews out of slavery in Egypt.

God broke the back of slavery here and when hate and prejudice persisted, ended the laws of segregation and separation and is calling is people to join him in showing the miracles of love in the midst of the hate that swirls around us.

God won’t do everything we ask and hope for.

But God will be God and God will do God’s will and what a wonderful, grace-filled will it is.

Even in the ups and downs and fears and regrets and disappointments and devastations of life.

Is anything to wonderful for God?

No. Nothing.

May we all hold on to that kind of faith.

Amen.