"Let It Be with Me"--A Sermon for Year B, Advent IV, Dec. 24, 2017

Sermon for SMHP, Year B, Advent IV, Dec. 24, 2017

Luke 1:46-55

⁴⁶And Mary said, “My soul magnifies the Lord,

⁴⁷and my spirit rejoices in God my Savior, ⁴⁸who has looked with favor on the lowliness of the servant.

Surely, from now on all generations will call me blessed;

⁴⁹for the Mighty One has done great things for me, and holy is God’s name.

⁵⁰God’s mercy is for those who fear the Lord from generation to generation.

⁵¹God has shown strength with God’s arm; The Lord has scattered the proud in the thoughts of their hearts.

⁵²God has brought down the powerful from their thrones, and lifted up the lowly;

⁵³God has filled the hungry with good things, and sent the rich away empty.

⁵⁴God has helped God’s servant Israel, in remembrance of God’s mercy,

⁵⁵according to the promise made to our ancestors, to Abraham and Sarah and their descendants forever.”

Luke 1:26-38

                ²⁶In the sixth month the angel Gabriel was sent by God to a town in Galilee called Nazareth,²⁷to a virgin engaged to a man whose name was Joseph, of the house of David. The virgin’s name was Mary.²⁸And he came to her and said, “Greetings, favored one! The Lord is with you.”²⁹But she was much perplexed by his words and pondered what sort of greeting this might be.³⁰The angel said to her, “Do not be afraid, Mary, for you have found favor with God.³¹And now, you will conceive in your womb and bear a son, and you will name him Jesus.³²He will be great, and will be called the Son of the Most High, and the Lord God will give to him the throne of his ancestor David.³³He will reign over the house of Jacob forever, and of his kingdom there will be no end.”³⁴Mary said to the angel, “How can this be, since I am a virgin?”

                ³⁵The angel said to her, “The Holy Spirit will come upon you, and the power of the Most High will overshadow you; therefore the child to be born will be holy; he will be called Son of God.³⁶And now, your relative Elizabeth in her old age has also conceived a son; and this is the sixth month for her who was said to be barren.³⁷For nothing will be impossible with God.”³⁸Then Mary said, “Here am I, the servant of the Lord; let it be with me according to your word.” Then the angel departed from her.

           Every Sunday in December, we have sung those words.  Words which we have sung before this December, to be certain, because that hymn, “The Canticle of the Turning” is a favorite for many here at St. Mark Hope and Peace.

           We’ve been singing that hymn, and we’ve been saying the Magnificat together, and we’ve leaned in to the promise that the world is, indeed, about to turn.  At a time when it is challenging for many of us to believe that God is going to turn the world, away from selfishness and sin and toward love and justice.

           We’re working on believing it, right?  Because believing is what we do.  And because we know that God can turn the world even when the world seems bent on its own destruction.

           We know that God broke into the world at a time when God’s people were despairing, living under oppression, economic injustice, the constant threat of war.  God broke into that world--became incarnate in that world, in order that the world might turn, back toward love of neighbor—all neighbors.  And that world received the greatest prophet, the wisest rabbi, and the kindest humanitarian it has ever known.

           All wrapped up in one person.

           God did that then.  Turned the world through one remarkable child born to two remarkable parents.

           God turned the world!

           And we know that the world will turn again.

           If we have been paying attention, we even know how.

           The world will turn when there are people willing to answer as Mary did:  “let it be with me according to your word.”

           They will be ordinary people—we know that too.  The ones whom God calls to turn the world are not usually kings, or captains of industry, or winners of awards.  God calls people like Mary—a maiden from Nazareth.  And shepherds, and other ordinary folk:  Abraham, Samuel, Esther, Martin Luther, Katie Luther, Dorothy Day.

           God calls people who have been set apart not by wealth, not by power…but by their willingness to say “Here I am” when God calls their names.

           The world will turn—our world will turn, when enough people follow Mary and the shepherds in saying “Here I am” when God calls.

           Refugees need homes and jobs?

           “Here I am.”

           Kid being bullied at school?

           “Here I am.”

           Injustice and inequality running rampant?  The voiceless need someone to speak for them? 

           “Here I am.”

           Bear the likeness of God for all the world?

           “Here. I. am.”

           And that is what do while we wait for God to turn our world.  We don’t wait passively.  Christians are called to be pacifists, not passive(ists).  We wait clothed in the words of Mary, mother of us all:  Let it be with me according to your word. 

           Because the world turns when each of us attends to the change that needs to be made in us. 

           Institutions turn when the people who make up the institution decide to live according to a word of love and justice.

           Neighborhoods turn when individual neighbors decide to work together for the good of all.

           While we wait for our world to turn from a path of destruction back toward the gospel of love and peace, we bear God’s likeness to everyone we meet.  We allow incarnation to live in us.  We provide a living witness to God’s power at work in us, at work in our world, and working slowly in the hearts of those who natter on about keeping Christ in Christmas while striking his witness from every other aspect of life.  We love them too, love them so hard they can’t help but see the power and grace that God has showered on them, that God calls us to shower on each other—including our neighbors who are brown and poor and disabled.  Especially our neighbors who are brown and poor and disabled.

           “Here am I, the servant of the Lord; let it be with me according to your word.”  Let that be our mantra…this Adventmas Eve and always.  And let us keep watch, dear friends…for the world is about to turn.

          

"Can I Get a Witness?"--A Sermon for Year B, Advent III, December 17, 2017

I'm going to post sermons here in 2018.  Starting now, since the church year already started.  I will try to remember to do this every week...we shall see...

Sermon for St. Mark Hope and Peace Lutheran Church, Third Sunday of Advent (Gaudete), Dec. 17, 2018

Sermon for SMHP, Year B, Advent III, Dec. 17, 2017

Luke 1:46-55

⁴⁶And Mary said, “My soul magnifies the Lord,

⁴⁷and my spirit rejoices in God my Savior, ⁴⁸who has looked with favor on the lowliness of the servant.

Surely, from now on all generations will call me blessed;

⁴⁹for the Mighty One has done great things for me, and holy is God’s name.

⁵⁰God’s mercy is for those who fear the Lord from generation to generation.

⁵¹God has shown strength with God’s arm; The Lord has scattered the proud in the thoughts of their hearts.

⁵²God has brought down the powerful from their thrones, and lifted up the lowly;

⁵³God has filled the hungry with good things, and sent the rich away empty.

⁵⁴God has helped God’s servant Israel, in remembrance of God’s mercy,

⁵⁵according to the promise made to our ancestors, to Abraham and Sarah and their descendants forever.”

John 1:6-8, 19-28

                ⁶There was a man sent from God, whose name was John.⁷He came as a witness to testify to the light, so that all might believe through him.⁸He himself was not the light, but he came to testify to the light.

                ¹⁹This is the testimony given by John when the Jews sent priests and Levites from Jerusalem to ask him, “Who are you?”²⁰He confessed and did not deny it, but confessed, “I am not the Messiah.”²¹And they asked him, “What then? Are you Elijah?” He said, “I am not.” “Are you the prophet?” He answered, “No.”²²Then they said to him, “Who are you? Let us have an answer for those who sent us. What do you say about yourself?”²³He said, “I am the voice of one crying out in the wilderness, ‘Make straight the way of the Lord,’” as the prophet Isaiah said.²⁴Now they had been sent from the Pharisees.²⁵They asked him, “Why then are you baptizing if you are neither the Messiah, nor Elijah, nor the prophet?”²⁶John answered them, “I baptize with water. Among you stands one whom you do not know,²⁷the one who is coming after me; I am not worthy to untie the thong of his sandal.”²⁸This took place in Bethany across the Jordan where John was baptizing.

[Show The Silence Breakers]

           Time Magazine’s “Person of the Year” for 2017 is not a single person.  Perhaps you’ve seen this.  The “Person of the Year” is “The Silence Breakers,” representatives of the hundreds of women—and persons of all gender identities—who came forward over the past year to say “no more” to sexual abuse, assault, and harassment.

           There are these ones on the cover, including a cropped photo representing one of the thousands of people who came forward in the midst of so much fear that she couldn’t show her face.  And then there are these, again, just a fraction of the women who have ended some of the silence around sexual assault and harassment.

           About them all, Time says this:  "The people who have broken their silence on sexual assault and harassment span all races, all income classes, all occupations and virtually all corners of the globe. Their collective anger has spurred immediate and shocking results. For their influence on 2017, they are TIME’s Person of the Year.”

           “Immediate and shocking results.”  The “shocking” part is probably debatable.  I think a lot of people have been waiting for this reckoning for a long time.  There’s a good chance that half of the people in this sanctuary have been victims of some form of sexual assault or harassment. 

           We’ve been waiting for the reckoning, right?  We’ve been waiting for the world to turn…away from immunity for the powerful persons who use their money or their age or their physical strength to harm the innocent. 

           It’s been a sort of long Advent season for those who have suffered in silence, or in the loneliness of the solitary witness.  Waiting, for people to believe what you’re saying without reservation.  Waiting, for the powerful to be brought down, and the lowly lifted up.  Waiting for the healing to begin.

           And yes, it is clear that we have not yet lived into a Magnificat Time—the rich are doing just fine, thanks…but the Silence Breakers cracked open the door and let in a little light.  When we most needed it.  It was a reminder that a collective, courageous witness can, in fact, turn the world.

           To paraphrase Margaret Mead: indeed, it’s the only thing that ever has.

           During this Advent season, we’ve been listening to Mary’s testimony that God is about to turn the world—testimony found in the passage we read together—The Magnificat—and interpreted in the hymn we sang together—"The Canticle of the Turning.”

           This morning, we add to those powerful testimonies, “the testimony of John.”  John came to testify to the light, he declares, in a gospel written by a different John.  He came to testify to the light, and that was pretty much his whole job.  Testify to the light.  Point…away from himself…and toward Jesus.  As we discussed Wednesday night, that is how you will often find John in iconography:  pointing.

           [Show cover]  The Silence Breakers might well have been channeling John.  Note the similarities:

--They offer their testimony from the wilderness.  Yes, there is a wilderness in Hollywood.  And Washington, DC, and New York City, and everywhere else where the word of truth is minimized and hidden and feared.

--They are called to account for themselves.  They first have to say who they are, before anyone will listen to what they have to say.

--They are speaking a word which the world needs to hear.  Which the world is desperate to hear,

--and they are speaking it on behalf of others.  Their witness is a witness on behalf of the whole broken world.

           There is a reason that the story of Jesus Christ, as told be each of the four evangelists, begins with John the Baptist.  It’s because the story of Jesus is more than the story of Jesus.  Right?

           The good news of Jesus Christ is the story of how God is willing to turn the world, away from sin and selfishness and toward justice and love for all.

           That story doesn’t exist if there aren’t people willing to tell it, people willing to bear witness to a story which will turn the world.

           Without witness, the light of the gospel would be subsumed by the darkness of sin and evil.

           But there is a witness.  “⁶There was a man sent from God, whose name was John.⁷He came as a witness to testify to the light, so that all might believe through him.⁸He himself was not the light, but he came to testify to the light.”

           There was a man named John, and then there was a man named Peter and a man named Paul and a woman named Mary of Magdala and a young man named Timothy and a monk named Martin and a saint named Teresa.

           There have been so many witnesses, and without them, the gospel would be dead.  Without persons willing to testify to the light, the light would go out.  And the powerful would redecorate their thrones and the world would not be about to turn.

           But there are witnesses!  Amen?  Can I get a witness?

           There are witnesses!  Some of them witness from the wilderness.  They witness from the wilderness because they have been driven there by shame and brokenness.  Or they witness from the wilderness because that is where they choose to be.  Because they happen to like locusts and wild honey, thank you very much.

           Some witness from the halls of power and the fortress tower.  That’s some difficult witness—turning over the stones which hold together institutions at cross purposes to God’s justice.  The ones who witness from those places [show cover]—and some of them are here as well—those ones are literally speaking truth directly to power.

          

           There are many places to stand and testify to the light of the gospel.  The wilderness, the campus, the boardroom.  The cover of Time magazine.

           All we need to figure out is where we will stand.  With whom will we stand.  Will we stand with the poor and marginalized?  Will we stand in the halls of power?  Will we stand with the brokenhearted who desperately need a word of hope?
          We must decide where we shall stand.  And how we shall speak a word of hope, a word of truth, to a hurting world desperate to turn.

          

            

A World Created in Balance--Sermon for Year A, Lent I, St. Mark Hope and Peace

Sermon for SMHP, Year A, Lent 1, March 5, 2017

Genesis 2:15-17, 3:1-7

                ¹⁵The Lord God took the man and put him in the garden of Eden to till it and keep it. ¹⁶And the Lord God commanded the man, “You may freely eat of every tree of the garden; ¹⁷but of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil you shall not eat, for in the day that you eat of it you shall die.”

           Now the serpent was more crafty than any other wild animal that the Lord God had made. He said to the woman, “Did God say, ‘You shall not eat from any tree in the garden’?” ²The woman said to the serpent, “We may eat of the fruit of the trees in the garden; ³but God said, ‘You shall not eat of the fruit of the tree that is in the middle of the garden, nor shall you touch it, or you shall die.’“ ⁴But the serpent said to the woman, “You will not die; ⁵for God knows that when you eat of it your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God, knowing good and evil.”

                ⁶So when the woman saw that the tree was good for food, and that it was a delight to the eyes, and that the tree was to be desired to make one wise, she took of its fruit and ate; and she also gave some to her husband, who was with her, and he ate. ⁷Then the eyes of both were opened, and they knew that they were naked; and they sewed fig leaves together and made loincloths for themselves.

           Lent is a time for renewal. So we’re starting at the beginning.  Genesis, Chapter 2.  So almost the beginning.  In fact, I think it would be helpful to go back a chapter to the very beginning.

           A reading from Genesis, the first chapter:

In the beginning when God created the heavens and the earth, ²the earth was a formless void and darkness covered the face of the deep, while a wind from God swept over the face of the waters. ³Then God said, ‘Let there be light’; and there was light. ⁴And God saw that the light was good; and God separated the light from the darkness. ⁵God called the light Day, and the darkness he called Night. And there was evening and there was morning, the first day.

           The story of creation is a story of balance.  A story of harmony.

           Light.  Dark.  Day.  Night.  Evening.  Morning.

           As the story goes on, each new day is filled with elements that balance one another:  sky and earth, land and water, creeping things and flying things.

           UNTIL the sixth day, when God created human beings in God’s image.  In the first account of creation—the one in Genesis One—God makes human beings and gives them dominion over the earth. 

           Now, at first, everything seemed okay.  In fact, it was going so well that on the seventh day…

           …God rested.  Which is good, because right after that, all hell broke loose.  Literally.

           There was this moment of balance.  I’m sure you’ve experienced it.  That moment when everything is in harmony.  Everything is flowin’ and groovin’. 

           And then it’s not.

           God made the humans—either all at once or the man first and then a helpmate for the man, depending on which account of creation you are reading and that’s why we are not biblical literalists because you can only be a literalist through Genesis, Chapter One, since Chapter Two offers a different account.

           And also because literalism is a terrible lens for a document of faith.

           But I digress.

           Genesis.  Chapter Two.  God made the humans and gave them the garden and responsibility and dominion over every living thing and God asked just one simple thing:  “Don’t eat that.”

           Enter the serpent.  Who is the serpent, according to tradition?

           The devil.  Which isn’t what the story says but is more or less accurate, since the devil is more of a presence than a little red cartoon man with a pitchfork.

           So the serpent came and convinced the humans to eat of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil and they did…

           …and so much for balance.  Harmony.  It all went away. 

           It went away because the real balance wasn’t between the man and the woman or between the humans and the rest of creation…

           …the real balance was between the humans and…?

           God.

           God ordered creation and created harmony among all living things.  And then God created humans, in God’s image, and God made the first covenant with the humans, in order that we would live in harmony with God.  God gave the humans everything, and in return, the humans agreed not to eat of the fruit of one tree.

           Should have been a pretty easy covenant for the humans to keep, shouldn’t it?

           You get everything.  Except this one thing.  One thing!

           And we couldn’t do it.  Couldn’t not eat the one thing. 

           That was just the beginning, wasn’t it?  Just the beginning of human beings looking at the world which God created with such love and knowing that we have the responsibility to care for that world and deciding that we want to know more than God. We want to take care of ourselves.  Make our own decisions.

           How are we doing?  How’s our balance right now as a species?  How’s our balance with all of the other species?

           Not so good.  God’s beautiful creation is taking a beating.  And we are generally looking the other way.

           The polar ice caps are melting faster than the folks who study climate change predicted.  This will surely be the warmest year on record, topping last year, which beat out the year before.

           All because we have decided that we know more than God.  And science.

           Clearly we are out of balance with creation.

           How’s our balance with one another?  Not so good, is it?

           God created this world and called it good.  Created it so that all creatures would live in harmony with one another.  Gave the humans all that we could possibly want.  Including more free will than is good for us.  And almost immediately, we exercised our free will to do the one thing God said not to do.  The fancy word for that is “concupiscence.”  The word we all know is “sin.”

           During the season of Lent, we are invited to think about our “concupiscence”—all of the ways in which we have turned away from God’s created order and chased after our desires to the detriment of our neighbors.

           During this Lenten season, we will be focusing specifically on justice. 

           What does justice look like?  What’s the symbol of justice?

           Balance.  This Lent, I want to invite you to consider balance, in your own life and in your relationship with the world.  What’s in balance?  What needs work?

           How are we out of balance with our world?  How is our world out of balance?

           We will be exploring these themes as we talk about justice this Lent. 

           God created a beautiful world and called it good.  And it is good.  Let us also live into that goodness.