Sunday, December 29, 2013

Sunday After Christmas -- Isaiah Through the Lens of Christmas



First Sunday After Christmas 2013
Isaiah 61:10-62:3; Ps 147; Gal 3-4; John 1:1-18
Father Adam Trambley
December 29, 2013, St. John’s Sharon

This morning we have a beautiful reading from Isaiah.  One way that we can break into the Old Testament prophecies is by looking at them backwards through the lens of the life and work of Jesus.  Especially when the church’s lectionary gives us a passage during a great feast like Christmas, we can usually gain helpful insight by imagining putting the scripture together with Christ’s saving work. 

When we read Isaiah in this way, one of the things we can do is see Jesus as the speaker.  We know that Jesus read these readings, and one of the gospels even mentions him reading part of the same chapter of Isaiah aloud in the synagogue and referring it to himself.

We can easily imagine Jesus praying, I will greatly rejoice in the LORD, my whole being shall exult in my God.  Many psalms and prayers start with this praise of God, and we know Jesus prayed, and that when he prayed, he really put some feeling into it.  Jesus was so close to his heavenly Father that he knew just how awesome, how glorious, how loving God is, and his praise would reflect how intimately he knew and relied on him. 

Specifically this morning, though, we might think about how much Jesus praised God for the miracle of his being born of a human mother and coming to dwell among us on earth.  We often hear about how God loved us so much that he stooped down to become a human being, and those sentiments ring true.  Scripture talks to us about how much God loved the world, that he sent his Son to us so that we might have eternal life.  An important part of the story of the Son of God on earth is his passion and death.  All of these considerations, plus parts of the Bible that talk about Jesus’ obedience to the Father, even unto death, tend to make us think that the Son of God being born in Bethlehem was a great day for us, but not so pleasant for God.  As if the Incarnation were like a divine chore that the Almighty had accomplish because he loved us, akin to cleaning the metaphysical bathroom for the Christmas guests, even though he would have rather have sat in his Lazy-boy and watched the Seraphim versus Cherubim in the angelic Quidditch bowl game.     

Why would Jesus be praising God for being born a human being?  We can imagine many reasons.  Maybe he liked hummus—he was born in the Middle East, after all.  We know he loved the people he was around, and maybe he was glad to interact with them as a person.  Or maybe there really is something exhilarating about just being human that sometimes we really do experience, even if we often forget how wondrously made we truly are.  Beyond that, though, Isaiah provides two specific reasons:
For he has clothed me with the garments of salvation,
He has covered me with the robe of righteousness.

What if we think about Jesus birth in the manger as providing the garments of salvation and the robe of righteousness to him?  We know that Christ’s human nature was not just a covering over God, but an integral part of the fully-human and fully-divine natures of the Son of God who was the Second Person of the Trinity.  But keeping that truth in mind, we can imagine the Jesus’ joy at being born to bring righteousness and salvation to the world.  Jesus could praise God for the saving work of reconciling humanity back to God.  Jesus’s whole being could exult in living out an example of righteousness to all people that helped them become righteous as well.  Jesus would not have been dragged, kicking and screaming, to the incarnational moment, but rather have enthusiastically embraced the emptying of his divine entitlements to become a slave so that the earth could be saved.   Coming down on Christmas meant that the Son of God took his eternal attributes of salvation and righteousness and made them manifest as a particular mission for his time on earth, and the prophet describes this mission as the clothing God put upon him.

Two aspects of these missionary robes are revealed as we continue reading that they are worn: as a bridegroom decks himself with a garland, and as a bride adorns herself with jewels.  On the one hand, the salvation and righteousness Jesus is putting on has a deeply relational component.  Instead of coming down from on high, Jesus’ work will have the deeply personal love we find in the best of marriages.  Then, too, Jesus’ work with be beautiful, like jewels or a garland, and it is the crowning work of God in the world.  His ministry will resonate with the profound truths of creation and be recognized as compellingly attractive by men and women of good-will.   

The next lines describe how and where God’s salvation and righteousness will occur through Jesus.  For as the earth brings forth its shoots, and as a garden causes what is sown in it to spring up, so the Lord God will cause righteousness and praise to spring up before all the nations.  Here we have beautiful image of the organic growth of plants occurring amid every group of people.

If we think about how plants grow, we recognize a very similar way that God’s salvation and righteousness have spread throughout the world.  We might prefer it to happen quickly, with the master gardener coming in, pulling weeds and planting a fully mature tree.  But instead, seeds are sown, and saplings burst through the damp sod.  With protection and care the shoots continue to thrive over time, eventually ripening enough to yield seeds of their own that can create other plants.  So much of the work of the church has this slow but determined character.  Attempts at sweeping change are often ineffective, but personal one-on-one relationships are able to manifest God’s love to people and transform their lives.  Then that transformed person shares Christ’s love with someone else, and eventually the slow-starting organic growth becomes like dandelions bedazzling a green field with thousands of yellow polka-dots.  Eventually as righteous and praise spread out, they go everywhere, even into unexpected places.  God’s salvation doesn’t stop at the border, or, as scripture says, it will spring up before all nations.

Then hear Jesus reading aloud, For Zion’s sake I will not keep silent and for Jerusalem’s sake I will not rest, until her vindication shines out like the dawn, and her salvation like a burning torch. 

The righteousness and salvation that Jesus is bringing to his people is supposed to shine forth like the dawn, like a blazing torch.  When people look at us as God’s Church, they should be blinded by the loving ways we treat each other, by the ways we care for those around us, and by the goodness that exudes from how we live our everyday lives.  And until we become this beacon of righteousness and praise, Jesus is not going to shut up.  He wasn’t silent while he was alive, but was constantly teaching, challenging and healing.  Now that he is risen from the dead, seated at the right hand of the Father he still does not keep silent or rest.  He is constantly prays for us, interceding on our behalf.  His Holy Spirit is also at work, guiding, directing, and emboldening.  Jesus and the Holy Spirit are fully engaged in the ongoing work of his church as we grow into mature citizens of the Kingdom of God.  Restoring us to the fullness of what we were created to be is the mission of salvation and righteousness that Jesus has put on through the incarnation, and he isn’t taking off that mission until his work is finished.

When Christ’s work is done, we are going to be changed in a noticeable way.  The nations will see your vindication, and all the kings your glory: and you shall be called by a new name that the mouth of the LORD will give.  You shall be a crown of beauty in the hand of the LORD, and a royal diadem in the hand of your God.

At Christmas Jesus became like us so that we could become like him.  At the end of our Isaiah passage this morning, he is telling us how much more we are going to become.  Every people on earth will notice how much God has transformed us, and our full radiance as men and women made in the image and likeness of God will overwhelm the most powerful people on earth.  We’ll sparkle more than the most diamond-studded, gadget-glowing, silk-surrounded sultans and CEO’s because we will be decked out in the divine bling of the Almighty and people will be noticing us in all the best ways.  God will see us as an appropriate accessory to his eternal being, so fabulous in every way will we be.  As someone once said to me, we will be beautiful on the both the outside and the inside because of what God has done for us in our creation through the Word and our redemption through Jesus Christ.  Even the names we use for ourselves today won’t be adequate to describe what we will finally be, so God will give us new ones.  This transformation of us and our communities is what Jesus was born in the world to do, and, especially since he is God, he is going to keep at it until he finally accomplishes it.

In the meantime, we do our work to live as children of God and citizens of his Kingdom.  We w ith Jesus greatly rejoice in the LORD, and our whole beings exult in our God because of his salvation and righteousness toward us. 

Thursday, December 26, 2013

Christmas Eve 2013




Christmas 2013
Father Adam Trambley
December 25, 2013, St. John’s Sharon


At Christmas, God shows up in the messiness of our lives.

The first Christmas was messy.
Mary, handmaid of the most high, is making do.
She knows why.  The angel announced to
Her blessings and honors and the Son of the Most High,
But she had not a single expectation met that first Christmas night,
Except Emmanuel making his way into the world
In the manger.

She had hopes, like any maiden embarking
On a betrothal and marriage.  Harkening
To the cry of her new husband, handsome and strong.
Starting a family ere long,
At the right time for such things. Instead
She was spirited off to her cousin’s ahead
Of gossipy tongues and other dangers.

Joseph said he understood. Heard,
Like her, but in a dream, a word
From a resplendent angel of the Lord
That the Son of God would be born
through her.  They would name the child Jesus,
who would be Emmanuel, God-with-us.

But then Caesar’s decree went out
The whole world round. 
So everybody had to get out
And go to their family’s home town.
Which meant Mary had to do without
Her mom and her own family when the baby
            Started to crown.

She was assisted through labor pains that night
By gracious, anonymous Bethlehemites
Who had no knowledge of why or how
This baby had come to be laid between ox and cow.
But by providing loving and gracious care
To the mother of God, they got to be there
When, all of a sudden, shepherds showed up.

Now nobody needs visitors right after they have a baby.
After Lily was born, I was required to remove, almost bodily,
            A maybe well-meaning nurse who needed us to know
            How to work the TV remote.  Not helpful.
But in an animal cave,
When lounging after labor
against a sofa of still-living leather,
with no hand-sanitizer in sight,
shaggy shepherds
from the surrounding countryside
should not be seen
but simply stay home with the sheep.
So it would seem – except for the angel.

The shepherds showed up,
            Telling tales told to them by the angel.
They ran to the manger,
past an amazed Joseph and a dazed Mary,
and exclaimed, “There’s the boy. 
Wrapped in swaddling clothes, just like the angel said.”
“What angel?” ask the midwives,
            While Jesus’ parents just exchange exhausted glances,
            Whispering to each other “That angel…again.”

In the midst of the messiness of midwives amid the animals
The shepherds shout the good news:
To you is born this day in the city of David a Savior
Who is the Messiah, the Lord. 
Mary treasures this new information,
            A revelation even to her
About the unimaginable scope
of God’s working in her own life.
            Mary, receiver of the angelic visitation
            Who just gave birth to the Redeemer of the world,
            Comes to know more of God’s love
            By listening to shepherds in a stable
            Because that’s precisely where God was working
            In her life.
All the others were just amazed at the miracle.
To be at any birth is a beautiful miracle,
but this was beyond even that bountiful blessing.
The people present experienced God that night
In an incredible, yet incomprehensible, way.
The animals, too, were touched.
            One tradition is that the nativity of Jesus
            Allowed those in that stable to talk that night.
They probably praised God
with moos and brays and bleating.
Except for the wide-eyed baby goat
            Who just said,
            “You’ve got to be kidding.”

So once everything began to calm down
And extended family again left town.
Mary started to put her life
Together as Joseph’s new wife
And the mother of an infant son.
She would have liked to run
Home as soon as she could
But another long donkey ride didn’t sound good.
So they stayed at a house in Bethlehem,
            And were there when the Magi
            Got off camels at their front door.

If the shepherds were a shock,
the Magi were more so.
Coming in and muttering about miles traveled
Searching for a star.
Dressed in unfamiliar clothes, speaking in strange accents,
            And kneeling before the baby Jesus.
Mary and Joseph really had no idea who the Magi were,
            And we don’t either.
Kings? Wise-men? Astrologers? 
The best translation of Magi may just be
            “Really weird dudes that aren’t from around here.”
But they came.
And they recognized Mary’s baby as a King,
And they brought him gifts,
            Kingly gifts
of gold, frankincense and myrrh.
Then Mary whispered to Joseph that she hadn’t expected the Magi,
And didn’t get them anything.
So Joseph got the fruitcake Aunt Agatha sent,
Took the tag off,
And gave it to the Magi for a treat on their way home,
Thus giving rise to a tradition we still honor today.
Seriously, though,
The Magi brought Mary an entirely new level of understanding
            About how much God was working through her life.
            At a difficult time,
            In a place she may not have wanted to be,    
            The very heavens bore witness to the scope of God’s saving power.
            A star revealed the light of God to anyone who cared to look,
                        Even to those who were looking hundreds of miles away.
            That light of God was revealed in her child, Emmanuel,
                        The King of Kings and Lord of Lords,
                        Wonderful Counselor, Mighty God, Prince of Peace,
                        The Word made flesh dwelling among us.

That revelation came to Mary, and to all of us,
            In the midst of the messiness of a most unusual time
            In the life of a mother and father merely trying
To take care of their very new family.

So it is with us.
Christmas comes,
            But it is often very messy.

Expectations are extravagant:
            The tree taller than last year.
            Another gift to be gotten.
            One more cookie batch to bake.
            If we have five minutes to sit down and enjoy,
            There is probably something we should be doing.
So much struggle for the perfect Christmas,
            Yet that perfection is not in our power.
Families are hard at the holidays, too.
            Some of us are missing people we love:
                        Some of them are far away and unable to get home.
                        Some are in the nearer presence of God.
            Then some of us have family around
                        That we wish we were missing.
Of course, for others of us here
Life has gotten so topsy-turvy,
            So scary and uncertain,
            That riding a burro to Bethlehem
            Might seem a magnificent intermezzo.

In the midst of such messiness,
The message of Christmas is not
            That Santa shows up and makes everything OK.
The message of Christmas is
            That God shows up in the midst of the messiness,
            If we only learn to recognize him.

Sometimes God is found
In the wonders of nature all around
Us.  The beauty of the setting sun
With colors bursting across the horizon.
The snow landing gently upon
The branches as the first rays of dawn
Fill our souls with heavenly light.

Sometimes God appears in guests unexpected
Arriving on our doorsteps when we,
            Most dejected,
Are about to give up.  Like the shepherds, they raise
Our hearts to heaven with shouts of praise.
They recognize the purposes in God’s mind
Of our work in our daily grind,
Showing us how in the midst of our strife,
We, like George Bailey, have A Wonderful Life
Filled with people God has given us to serve,
Perhaps more than we deserve.
That we will experience the presence of the
            Babe in the manger
When we reach out to love our neighbor.
Too often we only hear the whining
Until someone shows us how God is shining
Forth through those whom
We see merely as gloom,
But are really part of the unbounded
Providence of God at work around us.

At other times God has appeared
In the odd and the strange and the weird
Like turbaned foreigners riding through the night.
Our first reaction might be fright
When experiencing something we do not know.
But its mystery could start to glow
In the gaps of our lives now dark,
Where music is silent and the color stark.
In those places where our hearts know loss
God’s presence does not gloss
Over our sadness and pain,
But allows us to know that gain
Of his love enfolding us
Not rushing, but holding us
In the midst of turmoil and grief.
So that we feel the relief
Of knowing we are not neglected,
Even if his instrument is as unexpected
As Magi from the East
Announcing the birth of the Prince of Peace.
God’s ways are far beyond our ways
And for the unimaginable birth of his son
Both in the stable and in our lives
We give praise.

Then, of course, angels sometimes appear
When the path of our life is murky and unclear. 
Lighting the way with glory and song
That we can follow if we truly long
For God’s will to be done on earth
As it is in heaven, starting with
The difficult decisions we face--
The struggles where we need God’s grace
To endure and overcome. Trials which we
Ourselves would never be able to see
Through to the end without
Some kind of encouraging heavenly shout
Showing us that our labors are about
Nothing less than the unfolding
of God’s saving work in our lives.
Mary and Joseph could never have carried
The significant burdens of their special baby
Unless they knew that what they were going to do
was incredibly important in God’s plan.

Each and every one of us is invited
this Christmas to find where God is present
in the messiness of our ordinary lives.
It may be that an angel will announce
An astonishing appointment
To transform lives in unimaginable ways.
Or maybe Christ is coming in a disturbing disguise
That can be discovered only in an ordinary act of love.
Or maybe God wants enough of our attention to reveal
His unfailing presence beside us.

Regardless of where we find ourselves this Christmas
Jesus wants to be born into our lives this night
to help us understand
The unfathomable depth
       Of his love
            For each and every one of us.
                                   

Sunday, December 22, 2013

Advent 4 -- Waiting with Increasing Anticipation

                                                                 Advent 4A 2013
Father Adam Trambley
December 22, 2013,St. John’s Sharon

When children wait for Christmas, their intensity grows over time.  You know this because you have all been children once, and some of you maybe still are.  The waiting starts shortly after the last gift is unwrapped when somebody sees something they want and says, “I’m asking Santa for that next year.”  For a few months Christmas is left on the shelf, like a forgotten elf, unless a particular goodie catches the eye, or Mom needs to make a quick “naughty of nice” check.  By the time school starts, the awareness of Christmas vacation starts to dawn on the horizon.  By November lists are being made.  After Thanksgiving expectations ramp up daily with decorations, baking, parties, Kettle Korn, wrapped gifts showing up under the tree and the end of classes.  Occasionally snowmen even make an appearance.  By December 23, children of an easily excitable nature are pinballing around the house on a hot cocoa high, teetering on the edge of spontaneously exploding with anticipation.  Welcome to Advent waiting.

God’s people experience the same growing intensity over time as they wait for the coming of Emmanuel who is the incarnation of God-with-us.  The difference between God’s people and our children is that while we sometimes wish our youngsters would give their Christmas expectations a rest, God is always trying to heighten our longing for his coming. 

We start in the first reading from Isaiah this morning.  Ahaz is not a good king.  He does not do what God wants him to do.  He is facing war with two neighboring powers, and Isaiah is directed by God to go and tell him not to worry about them, because God is going to take care of things.  But Ahaz doesn’t want to wait for God to act.  He doesn’t have faith.  So Isaiah says that God wants to give him a sign so that he can trust God, so that he can expect God, so that he can know that God is going to show up and do what God is promising.  But Ahaz won’t do it.  He says he doesn’t want to put God to the test.  He won’t test God because he doesn’t think God can pass the tests he would devise.  He doesn’t think God is as powerful or as smart or as competent as he is and he judges the commander of the heavenly hosts of flying seraphim and cherubim with flaming swords an ineffective military leader.

Sometimes we are like King Ahaz.  We don’t want to put God to the test in the midst of whatever difficulties we face.  We’d rather suffer in fear and anxiety and despair than cry out to God for help.  We don’t believe, in our hearts, that God is actually able to handle the situations we have gotten ourselves into, or maybe we don’t believe that he cares, or maybe we just don’t want to do what it would take to resolve our problems.  We refuse to hand over the test of our lives to God because for some reason -- and it is never a very good reason – but for some reason we don’t let God answer the test questions because then we would have to read his answers.  God’s answers usually demand us to grow and change and love and give and let go of our resentments and fears, and generally become a key component of God’s long-term solution -- and ain’t nobody wantin’ that!

King Ahaz definitely does not want that kind of sign from God showing him clearly what to do.  So Isaiah gives one of my five favorite responses in all of scripture: “Hear then, O house of David! Is it too little for you to weary mortals, that you weary my God also?”  I love that line.  Isaiah then gives God’s sign for King Ahaz, which is, by the way, a sign that he is going to have to wait for.

Isaiah says that the young women is with child and will bear a son and shall name him Immanuel, which means God with us, and that before the child is old enough to know right from wrong he will be eating curds and honey because the two kings threatening Judah will be gone.  Now this sign from God is a prophecy that looks ahead to two different events on two different levels.  Both are true.  The first component of the sign tells King Ahaz that a young women he knows, possibly even one of his new concubines, either is or will shortly become pregnant and bear a son.  Before that boy gets to be a couple of years old, the king’s enemies will be destroyed by God.  Isaiah is guaranteeing that God is going to pass the test that King Ahaz wouldn’t give.  Many Jewish scholars, as well as Christian scholars, see this first level as pointing to King Hezekiah, Ahaz’s son and one of the few good kings of Judah.

Then, of course, we know the second layer of this prophecy that points to Jesus’ birth.  To get from Isaiah to Jesus, one important transition had to be made.  Isaiah’s words got narrowed from meaning any “young woman” to a “virgin.” 

In the century or so before Jesus’ birth, a group of Rabbis in Alexandria, Egypt, translated the Hebrew Bible  That Greek Bible was called the Septuagint, because the tradition said that seventy rabbis went into their own rooms, translated the scriptures, and when they came out they all had identical translations, thus proving the translation’s divine inspiration.  While such stories may have been slightly exaggerated to boost sales on Amazon.com, the edition was highly scholarly, and became the standard Jewish Scriptures for both educated Jewish people in the ancient near east and, later, for the early Christian Church.  The translators changed the Hebrew word meaning “young women” into a Greek word meaning “virgin.”  They could have used a comparable Greek word, but they didn’t.  Now instead of some particular young women being with child through the normal course of events, we have a prophecy in the most widely-used and inspired scripture at the time about a virginal conception. 
Beginning of the Book of Isaiah (Septuagint)
into Greek.

Now some people might call this a mistake.  Actually, the early Jewish scholars who argued with Christian leaders pointed to this translation issue to say that Isaiah’s prophecy couldn’t be about Jesus’ birth the way Christians used it.  The Christian understanding, however, is that God continued to be at work, inspiring and shaping the scriptures all the way through their creation, even through the translation and editing process.  The Greek Septuagint was the early church’s Bible, as well as the Bible for most Jews at the time.  We can consider that version as inspired as any other, especially since Jesus probably read it, and much of the New Testament is based upon it.  In fact, some of the books in the Greek Septuagint that New Testament authors draw upon are not found in the Hebrew Scriptures.  For these and similar reasons, the Episcopal Church claims the Holy Scriptures of Old and New Testament to be the Word of God, but does not make specific claims, as some churches do, about the inerrancy of the Bible in the original Hebrew or Greek.  We know that God has inspired the very complex and very human way that the scriptures come to us so that they can be God’s Word to us today. And, as God’s word, the Bible is rich enough to say what it needs to say to many different people in many different times in many different ways.  God’s word can mean something powerfully important to King Ahaz, and then point ahead to something even more important about the birth of the Messiah. 

Window in St. Joseph's Church, Nazareth
Moving a couple hundred years ahead from King Ahaz to Joseph, we see someone else wrestling with what to do in a very difficult situation.  Joseph, however, is waiting for God to do something.  He probably doesn’t expect God to do what God is going to do, but he is aware of the need for God.  He is in the middle of the two-part Israelite marriage process.  After the first part, which we sometimes call an engagement in English, the parties are legally married but they are still separate.  Then at some later time they start living together.  Now Joseph’s legal wife Mary has become pregnant before they lived together.  Joseph was troubled.  He was an upright adherent to the Jewish law that said you have to divorce people in this situation.  But he also cared enough about Mary that he didn’t want to cause a scandal for her.  He planned to dismiss her quietly, but he hadn’t yet.  Why not?  Maybe because he was still waiting for an option that seemed to be God’s true preference, and not just what others expected him to do, or what the hurt he might have felt told him to do, or what his rose-colored glasses told him to do.  He needed to find what God wanted him to do.  He waited on God, and the angel of the Lord showed up in a dream and told him what to do.  The angel quoted Isaiah to show him how God had planned this virgin birth.  He told them to name the boy Jesus, and that he would be God-with-us.  Joseph, we know, did what the angel told him.

Was following God easy for Joseph?  Not really.  People were already talking.  He didn’t even know yet that he was going to go to Egypt and back, then head back north to Nazareth.  We know that God had a plan, and that plan was carried out, but Joseph probably had some anxious times while waiting for God to do his part to make everything work out.  Joseph listened and invited God into the situation, but then he had to follow God’s lead while still waiting for everything to finally resolve itself.

We are like Joseph when we do invite God to come into the midst of our lives, when we really want to experience God-with-us.  When God shows up and we pay enough attention to do what God directs us to, God’s instructions often turn our lives upside down. We are instructed to pay attention to new priorities, develop new relationships, and learn to lean on God instead of whatever crutches we are prone to putting in his place.  We are shown the way to make the paths of our lives straight for Jesus to enter in.  But when we do so, we still have to wait for him. 

When our lives are turned all inside-out and upside-down, and we have been struggling to do what God   We wait for Jesus like young parents closing in on the birth of a baby.  We wait like the first Christians who really expected Jesus to turn up on any given day.  We wait like a thirsty deer in the desert desperate for streams of water.  We wait like the agitated addict trembling for the next fix.  We wait like children the night before Christmas who can’t sleep, can’t be quiet, can’t stop looking for excuses to get up glance out the window lest they get the glimpse of flying reindeer in the distance.  We wait because Immanuel is coming, God-with-us, and we really need him with us.  We need him in so many parts of our lives, especially in those places where we don’t know yet how to let him.  God is willing to give each and of us the signs we need during this season so that we know he is coming.  Then he will help us prepare the way so that he can.  In the meantime, with full faith in his coming at his right time, we wait.
wants, we start waiting for Jesus with great intensity.