December 24, 2019 - God Lights Up the Darkness - Luke 2:1-20

God Lights Up the Darkness

Luke 2:1-20

Christmas Eve – December 24, 2019

“The Birth of Jesus”

The opening scene of the movie The Current War shows a train moving through the night

·     Suddenly it stops and the men follow a lantern off the train into the pitch-black night until finally they come to a stop

·     And just as suddenly circle upon circle upon circle of light leaps into existence as Thomas Edison shows off the power of electricity, harnessed by his lightbulb

Caught my imagination when I saw this movie a month or 2 ago

·     How much we take for granted this light we have available at the flip of a switch

·     How different the world was before electric light was a thing

·     How deep the darkness, how powerful the difference between day and night

·     And how shocking it must have been for those investors seeing this light breaking apart the darkness that night

·     How the world changed with this invention

Imagine, then, the experience of the shepherds that night in the field

·     Living in the field, watching over their flocks by night – in utter darkness, away from the town; only the stars, perhaps the moon for light, along with little campfires to hold the darkness at bay

·     Darkness of the world in general; a people subjugated by Caesar Augustus – who had brought peace to the world and reigned over a booming economy and growing infrastructure (roads, temples, cities) – but through the subjugation of his subjects

o  Including the power to compel a census – for the purposes of taxing the people

o  Poor people like young, pregnant Mary and her betrothed, Joseph; forced – as Luke tells it – to travel to Joseph’s ancestral city to be registered

·     The darkness of a world under someone else’s power and control; knowing the weight of oppression and poverty

·     The struggle of travel; the challenges of childbirth  in a strange place, among strangers

·     Many kinds of darkness

And we, with all of our access to instantaneous light – light so powerful we can fill whole stadiums, light roadways, use floodlights

·     Still know the weight and power of darkness

o  Of depression

o  And addiction

o  Of loss & loneliness – esp. difficult at this special time of year

o  Division and disconnection between and from those we love and as a society in general

o  Violence, poverty, all the –isms and phobias

o  Sense of not knowing where we are going, of stumbling forward in the darkness without even a lantern to guide us

·     Darkness of worry and anxiety and stress

·     The darkness of this world can seem so heavy, so inescapable at times

And then suddenly, as we hear the story of the shepherds in this gospel, the world lights up, circle upon circle upon circle

·     For the shepherds, they were out there in the dark night, doing their jobs, minding the sheep

o  And suddenly an angel of the Lord shows up and stands before them

§  And “the glory of the Lord shone around them” lighting up the night so unexpectedly – and they were terrified

o  But the angel says (as angels always seem to do!) – Fear not! For see – I am bringing you good news of great joy for all the people – to you is born on this day a Savior, the Messiah, the Lord

o  And suddenly there was with the angel a multitude of the heavenly host, praising God and saying, “Glory to God in the highest heaven, and on earth peace among those whom he favors!”

o  Light upon light, voices multiplying, song increasing

§  Praising God and rejoicing, celebrating this baby who has come into the world, to bring peace

§  To be the light who breaks the darkness of this world

·     Thomas Edison in the movie declares – “I’m working on something so new, the world will never be the same!”

That is what we see happening in this story on this Christmas Eve

·     That God was working on something so new that the world would never be the same

·     That God would be born as one of us, coming to live with us and walk with us in the darkest moments of our lives

·     And then to burst forth with light, scattering that darkness

o  That is something so new that no one could have imagined it happening in quite that way

§  Not Joseph and Mary

§  Not the shepherds

§  Not the emperor

·     We hear this new thing announced and accompanied by the singing of angels and then we go the shepherds to see for ourselves the child wrapped in bands of cloth and lying in a manger

·     Born for us and for all people to bring light and hope and peace to everyone

·     May we go forth this night singing with joy and praise, and bearing the light of Christ into a dark world.

·     Amen.

December 15. 2019 - God's Steadfast Love Endures Forever - Ezra 1:1-4; 3:1-4, 10-13

God’s Steadfast Love Endures Forever

Ezra 1:1-4; 3:1-4, 10-13

Advent 3 – December 15, 2019

“Rebuilding the Temple”

Recent years, many I have known who have downsized and moved into new homes – and yet near enough to old homes (where they’d lived for decades) to see what new owners were doing

·     And lamenting, worrying, about what the new owners would do to the houses they had spent so much time and love and care and had gotten it to be what they wanted it to be – and the new owners have the nerve to come in and change things!

·     New owners glad and grateful to create things anew, to make the place their own

·     And former owners are in mourning for what once was and for the changes that have come

Ezra finds the people of Israel returning from exile facing a similar scenario

·     (not even mentioning the people who have been in Israel the whole time – the ones too poor, without enough status to warrant being carried off into exile into Babylon)

·     But just the ones who have come back, with joy and excitement and sense of mission when King Cyrus of Persia overtook Babylon and had a different way of managing conquered peoples – sending them back to their lands and allowing them to practice their own religions

·     Sending them back with blessing – and with riches – and with holy items from the former temple that King Nebuchadnezzer of Babylon had confiscated

·     And they return and immediately get to work

o  They build the altar on the former foundations of Solomon’s temple and begin the life of cultic worship again – offering burnt offerings to the Lord

o  And starting to rebuild the temple that was razed when the Babylonians finally came in and conquered the city of Jerusalem – seeking to restore it to former glory

·     And oh, when the builders laid the foundation of the temple of the Lord, the priests come in their vestments and with trumpets, and there’s a crew with cymbals (following the instructions of King David from the true Glory Days of the kingdom of Israel) – and there’s singing and praising and giving thanks to the Lord – and the people shout because the work has begun and they are imagining and dreaming about a new future

·     … and at the very same time, “many of the priests and Levites and heads of families, old people who had seen the first house (temple) on its foundations, wept with a loud voice when they saw this house, though many shouted aloud for joy, so that the people could not distinguish the sound of the joyful shout from the sound of the people’s weeping…”

In the same moment when the younger folks who had been born in Babylon and had never seen the first temple are rejoicing and celebrating that they are starting anew in their ancestral home, the older generations who could remember what it had been like before are in tears, weeping and crying – because what is starting anew is nothing like what they remember and they long for those good old, glory days

What do we do when places and traditions that hold such deep meaning are changed? When some rejoice and some weep, so that we can’t even distinguish between the sound of the 2?

·     There is a challenge in being the church in the 21^st century in America

·     Because our glory days are long past us, right?

o  We remember when Sunday school was bursting at the seams

o  And when worship attendance was so much more than it is now

·     Not unique to CTV by any stretch

·     American Christianity has undergone great transitions and changes in past decades

o  From the time when the church was the center of social and community life and everything kind of revolved around the Christian calendar

o  And it doesn’t remotely work that way anymore

·     And there is a time for mourning that, perhaps, for remembering a different time and wishing for the glory of those former days

·     And yet, at the same time, as H. George Anderson, former presiding bishop of the ELCA, once wrote in a book of the same title: It is a good time to be the church

o  There is cause for rejoicing at the laying of new foundations on the traditions and history that we come from

o  Being the church in 21^st century America comes with challenge – and also opportunity

§  Because people who come to church now are there because it really matters – because they are seeking something different, something meaningful, something lasting in their lives

·     It doesn’t always look the same as it did for previous generations

o  And yet, there is the praising of God, and giving thanks, and blowing trumpets as people come to know and encounter and worship the living God

And yet, even in the midst of this contradiction of weeping and rejoicing that is so intertwined that sometimes we can’t distinguish between the 2, the good news is what we are reminded of in the singing of the people as the celebrate the laying of the new foundation: “For [God] is good, for [God’s] steadfast love endures forever…”

·     Even in the joy and sorrow and excitement and upheaval and anticipation and uncertainty of this moment of returning to Jerusalem and beginning again to rebuild their lives and the temple, as people rejoice and weep in the same breath – God’s love for the people of Israel is unchanged

·     God’s promise to bring them home is fulfilled!

·     Even as the Jews in this time are trying to figure out what it will look like to live into this new future that God is creating, even as some look back to the glory days of the past with longing – what NEVER changes is the love of God that has sustained them and carried them through their entire history

o  This history we’ve heard pieces and parts of since September – the calling of Abraham and Moses, the exodus from slavery into freedom, the God who shows up for Ruth and Naomi, the God who never, ever abandons or gives up on the people, no matter how far they go astray

o  This God will be with them as they forge a new life in an old, yet unfamiliar place, as they rebuild the temple

·     And God promises the same for us – that no matter what changes come, no matter how someone else may change the house we loved so long in order to make it their own, God’s steadfast love endures forever

·     This is the gift and the challenge of Advent – that, living in this present moment, sometimes celebrating and missing the past, we look forward to what God promises is yet to come – the kingdom that has begun in Jesus, but is not quite yet fulfilled

·     But God has never yet not fulfilled one of God’s promises to God’s people

·     And so even when we cannot quite see the future that has changed so much from the past we loved, we cling tight to God, praising and giving thanks to the Lord, for God’s steadfast love endures forever.

·     Amen.