The Church Prioritizes the Vulnerable

This is the third sermon in a series exploring foundational texts for the identity and mission of the Church of Jesus Christ. The series will focus on four primary texts:

• Acts 2:1-21
• Matthew 28:16-20
• Luke 4:16-30
• 2Corinthians 5:14-6:10

Responsive Reading: Psalm 19

Scripture Reading: Luke 4:16-30

Theme Verses among the DM&F

Once upon a time, in the early centuries of the Christian church, there was a group of people that we now call the Desert Fathers and Mothers. Some of you have no doubt heard me reference them before. 

These were folks who began to see in their lifetime that Christianity was starting to go mainstream, so to speak. It was more accepted by national governments, it became more influential in politics and society, it accumulated more wealth and power, and in some ways and places was more the majority than the minority.

The Desert Mothers and Fathers were deeply suspicious of all this, and they came to believe that the message of Jesus that thrived on the margins would only be compromised in the mainstream. They believed the message of Jesus of liberation and abundant life would inevitably be lost in the shuffle of social acceptance; and that the efforts of some to make the Kingdom of God into a present, human, political reality would only create its antithesis.

And so they took on themselves radical lives of protest, often selling all they had, moving into rural areas, and committing themselves to living out the simple and abiding truths of Jesus as fully as possible. In fact, for many of these saints, it was common to take on a single teaching of Jesus and devote the whole of their lives—decades!—to learning to live that one instruction out completely. It would become their theme verse, if you will. 

And whether they picked something like:

• “take up your cross and follow me”
• or “do to others as you would have them do to you”
• or “blessed are the peacemakers, for they will be called children of God”
• or “the last shall be first and the first shall be last”
• or any of the other radical things that Jesus taught us

they tried and struggled and succeeded and failed in marvelous and manifold ways.

Jesus’ Theme Verses

They were—even in this, I believe—following a pattern that Jesus himself had modeled. For in our scripture lesson today, Jesus announces to his home congregation his own theme verses. 

In the hearing of women and men who were his teachers and neighbors and faith leaders and customers of his dad’s woodworking shop and others who had been witnesses as young Jesus “grew and became strong, filled with wisdom; and the favor of God was upon him” (Luke 2:40 NRSV)——In the hearing of all these who had seen him grow from child to adult in this little backwater town of Nazareth, Jesus stands up in synagogue (in their religious gathering) and he reads these words:

“The Spirit of the Lord is upon me,
because he has anointed me
to bring good news to the poor.
He has sent me to proclaim release to the captives
and recovery of sight to the blind,
to let the oppressed go free,
to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor.”

Jesus read these words before them, and then he said “This scripture is being fulfilled today.” 

Those hearing knew clearly enough what Jesus meant that Luke didn’t feel the need to editorialize in his gospel. That’s why they got so upset. It’s one thing to preach a sermon that leaves everyone with a warm-fuzzy feeling; it’s quite another to prophetically proclaim that God’s focus falls on someone you understand to be undeserving.

Jesus claims his anointing is to bring

• good news to the poor and not to the rich.
• good news to the prisoners but not their jailers
• good news to the impaired but not the whole
• good news to the oppressed but not the oppressors.

And to make sure they don’t miss his point, Jesus then reaches back to their own sacred scriptures and makes reference to God’s “good news” that was brought to foreigners… outsiders… enemies.

It’s no wonder they wanted to kill him. Many a pastors today have lost their jobs for preaching similar sermons. 

The Violence of Selfishness

It is tragic how much we fight other people having good things if we do not also get them ourselves, whether or not we need them. 

There are plenty of places where this shows up in society today, especially around the issues of employment or health care. If a person does not get a certain benefit in their own life—or did not when they were younger—it seems they cannot abide by someone else having that benefit—even if they would have themselves been glad to have received it at that point in their life. Or maybe they don’t even need it anymore, but they will fight tooth and nail to keep someone else from having something they cannot themselves benefit from. 

It’s a kind of selfishness that works its way out of us in dangerous ways, as it did Jesus’ hearers in this story. And so they at first dismissed and discounted him: it’s just Joseph’s boy. 

But eventually, they became so inflamed in their passions that they set upon Jesus with murderous rage—that someone they believed was undeserving would gain liberty and love from God was untenable. And so they pushed and pressed him to the precipice outside town. They intended to see him plummet to his death, but somehow Jesus peacefully passes between them.

But Jesus did not leave these verses behind. This isn’t just a sermon Jesus preaches. It is the life he lived writ large. He took these verses into his heart and into his mind and into his life, and he lived them out, as he had begun to do even before this sermon in Nazareth. 

The Spirit of the Lord is upon me…

“The Spirit of the Lord is upon me….”

Yes it is, Jesus, yes it is. And that was recognized even by those he was speaking to as well—even by those who sought to kill him. How could it not have been? 

How could they not have heard rumors of his baptism—of a dove descending and a voice from the sky?—”This is my son, the Beloved, with whom I am well pleased” (Matthew 3:17)

How could they not recognize it, after what they had heard of Jesus coming out of the desert after his temptation full of “the power of the Spirit”? (Luke 4:14)

How could they not recognize it, having witnessed their wayward son working his way around the Galilean preaching circuit and being praised by everyone? (Luke 4:15)

How could they not recognize it?

because he has anointed me to bring good news to the poor.

“The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he has anointed me to bring good news to the poor…”

The good news Jesus preaches is the same good news that John the Baptist heralded. The good news is that the Kingdom of God is here, that repentance results in a change of state; that whoever you are, wherever you are, whatever you have done, whatever the world thinks of you, the Kingdom of God that liberates all to life abundant is coming—and indeed it is already here!

Good news to the poor.

“Blessed are you who are poor” Jesus will say, “for yours is the kingdom of God” (Luke 6:20). And also: “woe to you who are rich for you have received your consolation.”

“The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he has anointed me to bring good news to the poor…”

He has sent me to proclaim release to the captives 

“He has sent me to proclaim release to the captives…”

Release to the captives… like the captive woman captured in a sting operation by the local constabulary. She is, as we see in John chapter 8, guilty beyond a shadow of doubt…… caught red-handed. Her captors—powerful men who purpose to pursue punishment for this woman while shielding a man like themselves—they know the law is clear, however selectively they seek to apply it.

But when they brought her to Jesus, they seem to have failed to understand that he purposes to proclaim release to the captives. “I do not condemn you,” he tells this traumatized and victimized woman. “You are free. Begin anew and live a new life.”

You see, “release” is an interesting word. It’s actually the same word as “free” in the later phrase “to let the oppressed go free.” But most of the time in the bible, it means “forgiveness.” To forgive is to liberate. To forgive is to release. In receiving God’s forgiveness, we—like that condemned woman—are released from our mistakes and from our past and from everything that holds us back, and we are liberated into a second chance… a new life… the opportunity to live into more.

and recovery of sight to the blind, 

“He has sent me to proclaim release to the captives, and recovery of sight to the blind.”

Blind folks seem to be attracted to Jesus like ants to a picnic. There’s the man born blind in John 9. There’s the blind man in Bethsaida whose blindness took two attempts and a bunch of spit to heal (Mark 8). There’s the pair that found him together in Matthew 9. And of course the countless multitudes lumped together when we’re told simply that “great crowds came to him, bringing with them the lame, the maimed, the blind, the mute, and many others. They put them at his feet, and he cured them” (Matthew 15:30 NRSV).

Surely “The Spirit of the Lord is upon Jesus, because he has been anointed to bring good news to the poor… to proclaim release to the captives and recovery of sight to the blind.”

to let the oppressed go free

And he has also been anointed “to let the oppressed go free.”

It is vital that we recognize that when Jesus speaks of the oppressed, he means the oppressed. He doesn’t mean that false victimhood used by the majority to solidify power against the minority—a page out of the devil’s playbook that far too many American Christians are following these days.

Jesus was himself a Jew and poor and a minority, and he lived in a land and nation possessed and plundered by a ruthless foreign power. He was no one and nothing to his world, just another nobody with his back against the wall. Yes, Jesus knew oppression in a way most of us in this conversation can never imagine it. 

But what Jesus himself initiates in “letting the oppressed go free” is not political revolution but personal restoration. The government is inconsequential to Jesus except in the way that it prevents people from living into the abundant life of God.

And so Jesus finds men and women—such as the Geresene demoniac formerly known as “Legion” in Mark 5)—and he evicts every impediment to freedom. Encountering this man bound by physical chains, and spiritual chains, and societal chains, and psychological chains, Jesus does not offer thoughts and prayers. Rather Jesus intervenes in the man’s life in a way that both brings restoration and life to the man, and binds their fates inexplicably together—both will be driven away because the community is unwilling to allow the oppressed to go free. They are unwilling to accept that this man who lived in torment might experience a restoration that they themselves do not need.

Yes, Jesus is committed to letting the oppressed go free.

“to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor.” 

This last part of Jesus’ theme verses doesn’t make him any more popular among us. He “proclaims the year of the Lord’s favor.”

This is most certainly a reference to the Year of Jubilee, prescribed by God for society in Leviticus 25. As God intended for society, a “year of jubilee” was to happen every fifty years in which all debts were forgiven, all property was restored to those who sold it, all those forced into slavery by poverty would be restored, and so on. God did not intend economics to impair the future of anyone. And certainly the misfortunes and missteps of one generation were not to be heaped onto their children. 

This concept of Jubilee—of forgiveness, and restoration, and reconciliation, and healing—it permeates the whole of Jesus’ life. When he is criticized because his disciples don’t fast enough, Jesus responds with hints of Jubilee as he compares his presence with that of a wedding to be celebrated. 

He teaches his disciples to pray “forgive us our debts, as we also have forgiven our debtors” (Matthew 6:12). Jubilee is written right into the Lord’s Prayer.

And it is how the early Church understood his life. In Colossians 2, Paul says:

“He destroyed the record of the debt we owed, with its requirements that worked against us. He cancelled it by nailing it to the cross.”

Colossians 2:14 (CEB)

“The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he has anointed me to bring good news to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim release to the captives and recovery of sight to the blind, to let the oppressed go free, to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor.”

Discipling

These theme verses chart the roadmap for Jesus’ own life and activity. They undeniably foreshadow the content of his life’s activity and work.

And that means—friends, Church—that it provides a roadmap for life’s activity and work for everyone who seeks to become a disciple of Jesus.

As Christians, if we are intent on “following” Jesus, we will busy ourselves with the kinds of things Jesus did, and that means participating in these liberating activities within the context of this very present world. 

Is this not what Jesus himself said to us?

“You are truly my disciples if you remain faithful to my teaching.”

John 8:31 (CEB)

Or:

“I have given you an example: Just as I have done, you also must do.”

John 13:15 (CEB)

To believe otherwise (Jesus continues) is to assume that you (the disciple) are greater than the one you are discipling.

Outro

So you see, as his disciples we have to understand that these are Jesus’ theme verses. We have to understand that they set the stage for his ministry in this world while he remained incarnate… embodied… enfleshed… among us and with us. This is the ministry that Jesus engaged in and took on himself. This is what mattered enough for him to devote the whole of his earthly existence to it.

It is what he sought to teach his disciples. And when he sent them out two by two, to the lands near and far and throughout the ancient Roman Province of Judea and beyond, the realities of these verses are what he sought they learn to lay their own hands on, that they (in turn) might teach it and embody it for others.

In doing so, Jesus knew that this world could be changed from bottom to top, from outside to inside, from least to greatest. This redemption… this liberation… this life… is not something that was going to come through the religious establishment. It is not going to come through political gain. It is not going to come when they establish a nation in their own imagining of God. 

Instead, this Kingdom reality would come when people were drawn by God’s love into a life of discipleship and shaping, so that we would learn to do the things that Jesus did. So we would learn to value the things Jesus values…… the people that Jesus values. So that we might learn ourselves to recognize when the Spirit of the Lord is upon us, and that our lives—our whole life…… our every decision… our every activity… our every everything proclaims good news to the poor, liberty to the captive, freedom to the oppressed, and absolution to those chained to debt.

If we are discipling Jesus, then these commitments and these priorities and these activities will be the sum of our life’s content and work, just as they were for Jesus himself. 

And just as Jesus recognized this is work that required the partnership of the disciples, so it is work that we cannot undertake alone. It must be embodied—incarnate—through the ongoing presence of Jesus in the world known as the Church.

As surely as Jesus has set his own priorities, he has set ours as well. The Church of Jesus Christ will prioritize the vulnerable, or it is not the church of Jesus at all.

God Cares about Justice

 

Scripture: John 2:13-22

 

 

Intro to Series & Week

As we move from Ash Wednesday to Pentecost, we continue to move “From Ashes to Fire” in our worship and reflection.

During this Lenten season, we wrestle with the question of “What needs to die?” in our lives in order for us to live into our calling and God’s desires. After Easter, we will begin to ask “What needs kindled?” in our lives in order for the Spirit to move and work through us.

This morning, as we read scripture and reflect on the question “What needs to die?” another answer emerges: Our tolerance for injustice needs to die.

“Was That Kind?”

The biggest theological questions of my life have not come from pastors at church. They have not come from professors in college or seminary. They have not even come from my own experiences in the world. The biggest theological questions of my life have been posed by my children.

One of these questions came at me quite unexpectedly earlier this year. I was sitting at our dining room table one day with my daughter—I think it was after school or something—and she started talking about the story described in our scripture lesson today. I think it had been part of a lesson in Sunday School, or God’s Kids, or perhaps the WEBS program at the First Presbyterian Church. I don’t remember exactly how she brought it all together, but it went something like this:

You know in the bible? When Jesus finds all those people selling things in that place that’s like church? And Jesus gets mad? And he turns over the tables and everyone runs away? You remember that?

Yeah, I remember that.

And then she gets to the point…… the real question: “Was that kind?”

Kindness

Now it’s helpful for you to know that in our house kindness is rule #1. We have three family rules, and kindness tops the list.

If you’re not kind, I don’t care if you’re following the rules.

If you’re not kind, nobody’s going to have fun.

If you’re not kind, nothing else is going to work.

I don’t care about “nice.” I’m not trying to raise nice kids. Nice doesn’t mean anything. I want to raise kids who are ferociously kind.

But alongside this, we also look to Jesus as the supreme example of how we are to live.

All of our experiences and encounters in life get filtered through the life Jesus lived.

All of our choices and actions get weighted against those of Jesus.

Even all of scripture gets read and interpreted through the lens of Jesus.

So I suspect you can see the conundrum, too. In our scripture text, Jesus is not acting in a way that most of our parents would describe as “kind.” Even my 10-year-old daughter can recognize that, and we do to when we’re honest. But what does that mean?

Does that mean something different about Jesus?

Or does that mean something different about kindness?

Or does it mean something else entirely?

Sacrificial System & Capitalism

If we’re going to get to the bottom of my daughter’s question, I think we’ve got to look a bit closer at what is happening here, as well as what the scriptures teach as it relates to Jesus’ actions and motivations.

We start by looking at the Jewish religious system—set forward (as they believed) by God in the first few books of the bible. Now, the Jewish religious system was inherently economic in nature.

In order to be set in right relationship with God, it cost you—in a literal sense.

In order to participate fully in the life of the community of faith, you were charged part of your livestock, your harvest, or your money. You had to produce or purchase the elements of worship that would be used to achieve the forgiveness of sins and do the other things that marked you as part of the community.

And while capitalism as an economic system had not yet been described by Louis Blanc or Pierre-Joseph Proudhon, we human beings (since our beginning) have had an uncanny ability to sniff out those situations we might manipulate for personal gain.

The state of the Jerusalem Temple in Jesus’s day is a clear example of this. As the world at that time had already begun it’s transition toward “urban” and away from “rural,” more and more people found themselves in need of purchasing their elements of worship; as city-dwellers, they simply did not have the land or resources to raise their own.

So folks (that many today would describe as “resourceful”) found a way to fill the gap. They acquired and sold (at a profit, of course) those elements that were needed. Demand and supply. And remembering that much of business is about “location, location, location,” what more successful business model can you imagine than right there at the Temple? Certainly there was an additional expense to be paid to the priests for the privilege of this prime real estate, but that would be passed on to the customer anyway—because consumers have always been willing to pay for convenience.

As demand goes up, so do prices. Supply and demand, right? Except we’re not talking about buying ink pens here—we’re talking about the cost of forgiveness of sins; we’re talking about how much you have to pay to be a participating part of a community of faith. Supply and demand—and all of capitalism for that matter—shouldn’t come into play at all. We Protestants took great offense to the selling of indulgences by the Roman Catholic Church back in the 1500’s—a practice that amounted to a “get into heaven free card”—and a practice that the Roman Catholic Church has since denounced as well.

On top of this were a second group of economic and religious predators. Also in conspiracy with the Temple priests and the aforementioned merchants, these moneychangers converted the various currencies in use at the time into the only currency the Temple merchants would accept. Despite all the Old Testament condemnations of interest and those who profit by charging it, the moneychangers had become a fixture in the Temple that could not be avoided—especially if you were an out of towner with limited means who was trying to live a faithful life.

The dark side of all this was that people were profiting off of God—and that in doing so, they were waging an unintended economic war against the poor among the Jewish people. That’s strong language, I know. But how else do you describe preventing someone from connecting with God because they don’t have enough money to do it (quote) properly?

If we look anything like God, the very thought of it should get our blood boiling too.

God & Injustice

Now quite often, we Christians draw too firm a line between New Testament and Old, almost as though the Old doesn’t matter, or that it cannot inform life and faith. But what we now call the Old Testament is what the biblical authors simply called “scripture.” It provided the grounding for Jesus’s life and faith, as well as that of the early Church. I’d dare say that should make it good enough for our consideration today, reading it (as did the early Church) through the lens of Jesus life and teaching.

Justice vs. Love

I have often heard folks say that it’s almost like there are two different gods in the bible: the God of the NT is a God of love, revealed in Jesus; the God of the OT is a God of judgement, who often seems to be rampaging through the world and condoning wanton destruction and death.

But I think this dichotomy stems from a fundamental misunderstanding of what the words translated justice, judgement, and the like actually mean in the OT. In fact, I believe that justice and judgment are natural extensions of God’s heart of love.

Justice in the OT means to set things right—to rightly discern and correct the proper way of things. As expressed in the heart of God, justice looks out for the marginalized, the invisible, or the taken-advantage-of in society. In the OT world, these folks are usually represented as widows, orphans, and aliens.

And there are literally thousands of verses that speak to God’s concern for these marginalized folks, and that when God sides with them it is “justice.” But perhaps the most striking example is the destruction of Sodom. This apparently “unkind” thing was the result of God’s justice and judgment—of God “setting right” something that was not right about the world. But this justice and judgment stems not out of hate or vilence, but rather love and concern for those who were victimized by that society. Ezekiel 16:49 says:

“This was the guilt of your sister Sodom: she and her daughters had pride, excess of food, and prosperous ease, but did not aid the poor and needy.” (Ezekiel 16:49 NRSV)

This (according to the bible) is why Sodom was destroyed: because they did not practice God’s justice toward the poor and needy.

Justice and judgment are extensions of God’s love as God sets right injustice. Understood thusly, justice and judgment are two sides of the same coin: justice lifts up those victimized and judgment brings down those who are victimizing others.

Rightly understood then, perhaps kindness is only truly kind if it is aligned with God’s justice. Applied to today’s text, we’re forced to wrestle with whether it truly would have been kind for Jesus to permit a predatory and unjust system to continue unopposed.

If kindness is an extension of justice for God, and justice/judgment is an extension of God’s love, then what Jesus does here looks a lot more “kind” than it might at face value. It’s simply that Jesus is showing kindness to victims instead of showing kindness to those profiting off of religion and poverty.

Isaiah 58

This wouldn’t be the first time in human history that God has worked to correct our faulty conceptions of compassion, justice, and love. Here in the season of Lent, my mind continually echoes with the words of the Isaiah reading from Ash Wednesday:

Is not this the fast that I choose:
to loose the bonds of injustice,
to undo the thongs of the yoke,
to let the oppressed go free,
and to break every yoke?

Is it not to share your bread with the hungry,
and bring the homeless poor into your house;
when you see the naked, to cover them,
and not to hide yourself from your own kin?” (Isaiah 58:6–7 NRSV)

As Isaiah tells us, loving God isn’t rooted in religious piety or believing the right things, but demonstrating justice for the downtrodden.

Good Samaritan

Jesus, of course, aims for a similar correction in the Parable of the Good Samaritan in Luke 10. “Who is my neighbor?” he is asked. And in a very “Mr. Rogers” kind of way, Jesus realizes that the reason for the question is because the one asking does not know what it means to be neighborly……to be kind, as we’re talking about it today. You remember the story?

Someone is down and out—taken advantage of, treated as less than human, abused, and completely uncared for—left for dead, as Jesus says. Discarded by the side of the road like an apple core or banana peel.

A pastor comes walking by—someone who is regarded as spiritually astute, who has responsibilities in the Church, and who many consider “closer” to God than any ordinary person ever achieves. This pastor sees the story’s victim—that’s important (I think) and not included by accident. The pastor recognizes that there is a person here who has been chewed up and spit out by life. This person may even be dead, and dead people take up a lot of a pastor’s time when they come our way. So whether for this or another reason, the pastor denies what he sees, and she passes by without a word or interference.

Some time later, a deacon comes walking by—someone who knows the bible inside and out, who has important and visible responsibilities in worship, a person who (like the pastor) is an important spiritual role model for the community. But also like the pastor, the deacon sees the man in his destroyed and vulnerable state—perhaps even dead—and he slips along as though the man were a discarded McDonalds bag, caught in the grass.

Finally, a third person comes by. This person doesn’t go to church. He has a different religion than you and than the victim of Jesus’s story. He’s the kind of person you’ve been warned about by your culture. So while it might make us uncomfortable, considering this man a Muslim is a pretty close parallel in our modern version. (This is, after all, a parable Jesus tells with the purpose of making people uncomfortable). The Muslim man is moved with compassion for the perhaps-dead body on the side of the road. Whereas the good, “Christian” folks were too busy, or too pious, or too judgmental, or too whatever to be bothered, the Muslim man goes out of his way and allows this encounter to cost him in time, money, and energy. Not content to pat himself on the back for a singular act of compassion, the Muslim man commits to the victim’s ongoing welfare and well being.

That is, of course, what happens when we genuinely feel compassion for someone else; our lives become entangled in ways that are not easily undone.

Who is my neighbor?
What does it mean to be neighborly?
What does it mean to be kind?

It means that compassion moves through us as we participate in God’s justice.

It means our religion or faith is an expression of the love of God.

It means that the love of God finds action in our lives through our participation in the pursuit of justice and the fight against injustice.

It means that sometimes we (like Jesus in the Temple) have got to stand up against the unjust systems of this world, even though people will point at us and use our stand to manipulate and discount the message we seek to live out.

Trust?

But if we trust God enough to follow Jesus, then we already know that they will not succeed.

God can and will manage our reputation, if we are actually risking it for the kingdom.

God can and will advance the Kingdom, even if the forces of darkness in this world seem to undermine and manipulate it.

God can and will bring about justice, because God’s heart is love.

What needs to die in order for us to live into who God has called us to be? Our tolerance for injustice needs to die, or else we will find ourselves working against—rather than with—our God and savior.

Amen. May it be so.

Significant

Scripture: Psalm 148

Poor Judgment

We humans are often poor judges of what is significant.

When I look back over my life, my own track record is pretty abysmal. An example: my choice of which college to attend.

Once I narrowed down college choices to three, I visited each. Ultimately, I chose to attend the one with crab grass. Seriously. That was what did it for me. The school I visited previously was so clean-cut it felt artificial. I didn’t fit there. But I fit with crab grass.

It’s a pretty poor logical leap, I’ll readily admit. And a rather flippant sort attitude toward a decision that ultimately shepherded me through theological crisis, introduced me to my spouse and some of my best friends, and had a significant impact in setting me along my current life path.

Another example: I chose to attend seminary as a stalling technique. Seriously, again, yes. I wanted to go to “real” grad school—you know, to work on a Ph.D.—but I had trouble narrowing my field down to the acceptable categories. So I avoided making the decision for three more years by attending seminary.

Again, a fairly petty process of decision-making for a commitment that resulted in more shaping of my worldview than probably any other I have made. This decision set me up for my travels in the Middle East, it forced me to find real-world application for my academic interests, and (perhaps most to the point) it was my official training for the job I now have…… Because of stalling.

On the other side of the coin, there have been countless decisions I thought were going to be life-changing yet are barely noticeable in hindsight. Purchasing decisions tend to fall into this category. So do conversations I’m too afraid to have.

It’s quite humbling, really. If it’s a decision that greatly impacted my life, I probably did not regard it with much significance at the time. If it’s a decision I thought would be immensely significant, it probably didn’t make much difference at all.

Jesus’ Birth

The story of Jesus’ birth illustrates that this pattern is larger than just me. All the people who should have recognized its significance completely missed the point.

All those religious people who knew the bible inside and out……

All those academics who debated the finer—and sometimes trifling—points of theology……

All those priests who serviced the temple and carried out the rituals of the faith……

All of them had all the pieces right in front of them, but they never put them together. It was the most significant event in human history, but it went right over their heads.

Those with Eyes to See

But not everyone missed it. You know who does tend to recognize what is really significant in the world? What really changes things?

Creation. Creation senses things and begins adjusting to shifts and pressures that we haven’t even started to notice.

Outsiders. Those on the margins of the world and culture are more susceptible to shifts that would make them victims, and so they tend to be more in tune with what these things mean.

Those in power. Those wielding the power of this world tend to have keener insight than most when it comes to what threatens that power.

Creation…… Outsiders…… Those in power…… These happen to be the elements in the psalm that recognize the significance of Yahweh God. And if we read closely, these are also the elements in the story of Jesus’ birth that recognize the significance there, too.

1. Creation

Many of the same elements of creation that praise God in Psalm 148 proclaim God’s praise in the birth of Christ as well. In the Luke 2 account, the heavens become filled with “the shining light of God’s glory” (Luke 2:9 VOICE). An angel and then even a “heavenly host” appear proclaiming God’s praise (just like v.2 of the psalm). And let’s not forget the feeding trough in which the baby Jesus is laid; while the bible doesn’t name the specific animals that were nearby, it isn’t too much a stretch to imagine the cattle of the psalm “lowing” near the baby Jesus, as we sing in the carol “Away in a Manger.”

Similarly, in Matthew’s account, the Magi see a peculiar star—something in creation that is out-of-the-ordinary—and follow it to Judea.

The “heavens,” “the heights above,” “the angels,” the “heavenly hosts,” the “sun and moon,” the “shining stars,” the “highest heavens,” the “waters above the skies,” and even the “cattle” have certainly added their voices in recognizing the significance of Jesus’ birth.

2. Outsiders

But the psalm also suggests another group that tends to recognize the true significance of things: outsiders. The psalm makes reference to women, the elderly, and children praising God (v.12)—the very people with the least power in the ancient world. They define “outsiders” in the sense that they are powerless.

But the psalmist goes further than that. In the Hebrew Bible (the same as our Old Testament), the writers refer to non-Israelite rulers using the words of v.11 of the psalm: “kings of the earth and all nations, you princes and all rulers on earth.” Non-Israelite rulers would of course be people who don’t know Yahweh-God. In the psalm, this trope anticipates a time when all people know and follow God’s direction and justice—much akin to the prophetic visions of Isaiah 2 and other places. The leaders and nations referenced in the psalm are outsiders, and it is outsiders who are precisely the ones who first recognize the significance of Jesus’ birth.

In Luke, it is famously a rag-tag band of shepherds who first receive the birth announcement, and subsequently follow their curiosity and hearts to our infant Savior. For Matthew, foreign, pagan Magi—astrologers rather than kings—travel from afar. Tragically, they are more in tune with what God is doing than God’s own people. They realize it’s significance.

3. The Powerful

There is (then) a third group of people (overlapping somewhat with the previous group) that recognize the significance of what God is doing: those in power. “Kings,” “princes,” and “judges” are ones who ordered the ancient world. They wield the power, control the money, and have absolute authority. That means, of course, that they are the ones with the most to lose when the Son of God—the Messiah—comes onto the scene and turns the world upside down.

Matthew’s story illustrates this for us most clearly. When King Herod began to hear rumors of what the Magi expected to find, he grew concerned—he knew immediately that Jesus’ birth had significant repercussions for his ability to hold onto his power and authority. So he tries to manipulate the Magi into betraying the newborn Messiah; and, when he realizes his trap failed, he slaughters countless infants and toddlers in an effort to protect his power.

Faithful people may have missed the significance of that newborn baby, but those in power knew just how dangerous this Jesus was to them; they did not miss the significance of his unassuming birth.

Conclusion

While I’m not arguing this psalm is prophetic in any way, I find it a remarkably appropriate description and response to the birth of Jesus.

In the advent of Christ,

“the name of the Lord” is praised;
God “alone is exalted”;
and God’s “splendor [shone] above the earth and the heavens” (v.13).

In the birth of Jesus,

God “has raised up for his people a horn,
the praise of all his faithful servants,
of Israel, the people close to his heart” (v.14).

In its own way, Psalm 148 guides us into recognizing the significance of Jesus’ birth for ourselves and all of creation. Just as faithful people have seen for thousands of years, this ancient prayer and songbook of God’s people guides us (this morning) into relationship, celebration, and awareness.

And so, in recognition of the significance of the appearing of our Savior, let us join our voices with this Psalmist of old. Let us “Praise the Lord.”

How God Works

Exodus 3:1-15

 

“How God Works”

I love this story. It is one that has echoed deep within my soul since I was young. It is one that has shaped how I understand my own calling. It has affected my spiritual practices. It was chosen by the preacher at my ordination as the primary scripture reading. It is a story I return to again and again, and for many different purposes.

I think one of the reasons it is such a powerful story is that it reveals to us so much about God—and it does so in a way that is consistent with the rest of scripture. Since we are human and God is God, we can never fully comprehend God and God’s ways—Job and many others in scripture learned that lesson well. But like the Psalmist and others, that hasn’t stopped us from working to understand all we can about who God is and how God works.

In our scripture text, God speaks for God’s-self. And in vv.7-8, God describes God’s actions and reasoning through a series of verbs—action words. These don’t give us a strict sequence of events, but they reveal what God is going to do and how God came to that decision. And that, in a nutshell, is going to be the story of redemption over and over again—throughout the Bible, and throughout our lives.

So what are these verbs? What are these actions? Well these verses tell us that:

God sees…
God hears…
God knows… (the NIV translates this “is concerned”)
God comes down…
And God does all of this in order to bring up.

God Sees

First: God sees.

Frequently in scripture—especially in the Psalms—being “seen” by God is an important part of deliverance. In fact, there are quite a few places where it is assumed that if God sees you in your pain, God will help. Psalm 119:153 provides one such example, with the Psalmist crying out: “Look on my affliction and deliver me” (ESV).

When I was a kid, I remember being taught that God saw everything we did, everywhere we went, and even everything we thought. This was offered as a threat. I better do the right things, act the right way, and think the right things or else God was going to get me. As I’ve gotten older, I’ve realized that’s not God, that’s Santa Claus:

He sees you when you’re sleeping,
He knows if you’re awake,
He knows if you’ve been bad or good,
So be good for goodness sake!

Now it is true that persons in the Bible occasionally ask God to “look away” because they can’t bear the scrutiny that God’s all-knowing gaze brings. But even in these situations, God’s gaze (on or away from us) is understood to be a means of grace.

Here in Exodus, being seen by God is tied up in the grace that leads to deliverance. But this only makes sense to us today if we have experienced being invisible.

The Hebrew people were driven by economic hardship to journey into Egypt. Categories of legal and illegal immigration did not exist in the ancient world; there were only people who were born locally and people who came from other places. The immigrant Hebrews became part of Egypt because of a terrible famine—a lack of food. Within Egypt they lived peacefully for some time, contributing to the overall well-being of the their new country. But then there was a shift in the government that demonized immigrants and outsiders, blaming them for all the troubles that Egypt was experiencing. The tide of popular opinion was turned, and immigrants like the Hebrews were treated as a lower class of humans. In fact, they came to be seen as slaves with no more rights than the animals used for food and agriculture. This slippery-slope of prejudice and domination and power became such that Hebrew children were being killed for threats they did not pose to the authorities, and even access to safe reproductive health was dismantled when Pharaoh authorizes only two midwives to oversee the births of every Hebrew woman within all of Egypt.

At what point (do you think) did the Hebrews begin to believe the xenophobia and racism that was slandered against them?

At what point did they begin to feel themselves less than human…… or transparent…… in the eyes of others?

At what point did they begin to think even God couldn’t or wouldn’t look on them anymore?

There are times in my life I have felt invisible. It is crushing. Disabling. And I know I have experienced but a fraction of what countless others in our nation and world experience every single day.

When you feel invisible, the one thing you want more than anything else is being seen. By anybody. For any reason.

That God sees us matters. Especially when we are forced to the margins. Especially when the world is set against us. Especially when those we considered our neighbors seem to turn and gloat over the corpses of our dying lives.

In those times we cry with the Psalmist: “Awake! Why are you sleeping, O Lord?” (Psalms 44:23 ESV)

In those times we pray that what is hidden will come to light (cf. Mk 4:22; Lk 8:17).

We need to be seen. But seeing alone is not enough; we need deliverance, as Psalm 35:17 expresses: “How long, O Lord, will you look on? Rescue me from their destruction, my precious life from the lions!” (ESV).

God Hears

The second thing God does in this passage: God hears.

Hearing is a lot like seeing. When we are not heard, we feel invisible. We feel we have nothing that others value. We feel that no one cares.

One of my personal pet peeves is not being acknowledged. If I am talking to you, please make eye contact or at least respond verbally that you heard and understood what I said. Not just for me, either, but for all conversations in which you engage. If someone speaks to us and we do not acknowledge, they have no idea whether we heard, or cared, or agreed, or disagreed, or anything. Not responding communicates—in terms of manners and consideration—that they are insignificant to us.

And just like with seeing, a person whose voice is never acknowledged will do anything to get heard.

We need to be heard. We need to be acknowledged and valued.

God has not only looked upon and seen the plight of the Hebrews in Egypt; God does not only know what it looks like—God has also heard their experience given voice. God has heard their stories, their lamentations, their grief, and their pain. God has listened to them because God values them, and because God needs to hear their experience if God is to be a force of love and deliverance in their lives.

There’s a lesson there for us……

God Is Moved

God has seen… God has heard… and the third thing we come to is “God knows“—or what the NIV translates as “God is concerned.”

Now I could spend the next ten minutes talking about what these words actually mean and why the translations differ so much on what they express, but I don’t have time for that this morning, and neither do you.

However translated, the point is that God is moved by what God has seen and heard. The text says that on account of God’s experience of seeing the violence and hearing the experiences of the Hebrews, something changes in God that prompts God toward compassionate response. God identifies so fully with them that their experience becomes God’s own experience—the violence done to them is a wound that God feels acutely.

God Comes Down

God’s response to this is to “come down.” That’s the fourth verb.

Psychologists and behaviorists talk about “fight or flight.” It is a biological instinct within us that affects how we feel when we are threatened: we either double down to “fight” or we turn to run in “flight.”

As we have all watched and read the reports of the destruction Hurricane Harvey has wrought in Texas, we have heard stories of genuine heroes whose responses were not defined by “fight or flight.” Knowing they were taking on great risk to themselves, they turned toward the most dangerous situations with hearts of love and compassion for people they did not know. In at least one case—that of Sgt. Steve Perez of the Houston Police Department—that sense of responsibility for our fellow human beings led to his own death in the floodwaters.

These beautifully human beings are responsible for countless lives being saved, and they remind me of God in this passage. When everything is going wrong with the Hebrews, God’s response is not “fight or flight” but rather presence. God is going to come down—to be present—with people who are hurting, who feel invisible, who don’t feel heard, and who need deliverance. Whether it seems like a lot or a little, whether it appears to make a difference in the grand scheme of things or not, God is going to be with them.

God Lifts Them Out

The purpose of all these actions on God’s part is of course revealed in the middle of verse 8: “to bring them up out of that land into a good and spacious land, a land flowing with milk and honey.”

At risk of being cliché, God’s purpose is not to give them a “handout” that gets them through the moment, but to give them a “hand up” so they might even thrive in wholeness and wellbeing.

In the midst of their desperate situation—when they feel so forgotten, ignored, and unheard—God lifts them up and sets them in a place where they can have a new start—where they can learn to live (and live well) all over again.

The story of these Hebrews and the deliverance their God brings about becomes for them their most significant story, as time moves on. These events are the ones that shape their identity and understanding of God from this point forward.

From the valley of deep darkness to the fertile plain, as Psalm 23 relates.

From the death of Passover to abundant life in the Promised Land.

In Christ: God Sees, Hears, Knows, Comes Down, Lifts Us Up

God sees… God hears… God is moved to compassion… God comes down…
And God does all of this in order to bring them up.

This is how God works.

Most every story of redemption and deliverance that is recorded in the Bible follows this basic pattern, including the story that is closest to our hearts: the story of Jesus Christ and the good news of God’s love.

God has been involved with us since our very creation. Yet the ways God had used to provide deliverance were not working. We kept failing to keep our covenant promises, even though God proved infinitely faithful to us. Over and over, God reached out in forgiveness and love, hoping to draw us into a welcome embrace forever. But it was not enough. Not yet.

God saw that we were taking the good gifts of God and twisting them. Things like the Law, which was given as a means of grace, became in our hands a means of self-righteousness and a weapon to do harm to others.

God heard the cries of all creation, groaning in desire for redemption from the darkness that plagued us.

And God was moved to compassion, taking on our grief and struggle.

So God did what God has always done—yet in a new way: a way that would open the doors of forgiveness and grace so wide that no evil force could ever cut them off again. God would come down……personally……incarnate-ly. The part of the Trinity we know as Jesus would choose—in the words of Philippians 2:6-8:

to “empty himself, by taking the form of a servant, being born in the likeness of men. And being found in human form, he humbled himself by becoming obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross” (ESV).

Out of compassion and love for us, God came down, becoming as fully human as you or I, experiencing the gamut of life—yet in it God would show us how to truly live: how to be kind, selfless, compassionate; and how to escape the cycles of violence that destroy us. God in Jesus comes down in order to lift us out of sin and despair. 

In no way is this demonstrated so fully as his willingness to go to the cross—to his death—with the hope of achieving what God has always wanted to achieve: to lift us up into new and full life.

We who follow Jesus know that he did not remain in the grave. The very God who loves us saw to that. In raising Jesus from the dead, God has overcome the greatest weapons the enemy held against us: death and fear. Through the resurrection, the final victory over the forces of evil has been ensured. And even now, the promise of Jesus assures us that God’s Spirit now remains with us for comfort, power, and advocacy. Jesus will come again—in the fullness of time—and everything will be made new again.

To be clear: I do not hold the keys to the gates of heaven. I’m not in charge of any eternal attendance roster. But I know that the grace of God is more expansive than we can ever imagine. I know that God’s love and forgiveness reaches to heights and depths that are beyond our comprehension.

I know this because God has loved me. Because God has forgiven me. Because God has offered me grace in abundance……and I have seen and known God’s mercy.

As we gather today as the Body of Christ, we rest in the knowledge of God’s expansive mercy. Of God’s boundless forgiveness. Of God’s endless love……a love (that scripture assures us) conquers all.

That, sisters and brothers, is how God works.

Underdogs & Mission

As Christians, we side with the underdogs because we most clearly identify with the persecuted margins (this is who Jesus was). Through Jesus’ life and death, we have the capacity to more readily see the systems–the “powers, and principalities”–that damage and destroy life. And by following Jesus’ footsteps, we have the impetus–the mission–the challenge to expose and undermine the forces that harm those outside the “normative pattern of life.”