An Essential Excerpt from the Christmas Message

“An Eye For The Lowly”

Luke 1:46-55

Beloved, it’s Christmas again!  This is that special time of year when expectations are high.   But so is anxiety for too many people.  They (we) are anxious because there is so much that is contradictory about what Christmas means and what it requires of us, and we are pretty well convinced in our heart of hearts that there is little we can do to meet all the expectations, especially the expectations that others have of us. When this sacred day comes so close to the Sabbath, we are presented with a special opportunity to re-assert the reason and the true meaning of the season, in the midst of all the other definitions and purposes that are floating around.  Let us go first to the source of the occasion, the birth of Jesus, and the circumstances surrounding his coming into the world.

Mary, the lowliest of servants as she characterized herself, gave birth to Jesus in a manger among livestock because there was no room for her and Joseph in the inn. From the beginning, through the demonstration of the very circumstances of his birth, we are put on notice that Jesus’ life and the focus of his concern would be like no other known in human experience. As the son of man, his life and ministry was to shine the light on the purpose of human life and its place in the divine scheme of things.  Ours is but a temporary sojourn. We are born, then we die; but the power and presence of our creator continues.  In the time we have on the earth, interspersed with a few good times and bad, we are called to allow our lives to be used for God’s purposes, to allow our personalities to reflect the holy spirit of God, in the context of human community.

Any power or status or enduring worth we appear to have is only temporary, and the very value we have, the meaning we have is found in our relationship with and dependence upon God.  In recent weeks in Bible Study, we have studied the nature of sin, and we have concluded that sin is fundamentally having a higher opinion of ourselves than we ought.  And all the things we customarily think of as sin are but symptoms of our larger failing---that of being drunken with pride.  If we are stricken with this moral illness, if we have a really bad case, we can expect to meet a tragic wall sooner than later.  Thus the expression, “the bigger they come, the harder they fall.”  In the end, no matter who we are and what we have, we are all subject to the same fundamental human conditions of mortality, aging, loss, sadness, failure, abandonment, lovelessness, the inability to control the inevitable.

When we face these existential realities, nothing can prop us up except the love and strength of an all-knowing and ever-present God. And God’s love and strength are most readily available to those who are conscious of their weaknesses and their low station, and are inclined to ask for help.

Mary sings (The Magnificat) her song of praise, being fully conscious of her powerlessness and expressing her expectation that the one who is to come will be her source of strength; that he will be her rescuer; that he will be her shield and protector from the proud---the sinful, from those that are full of themselves.  “He will scatter the proud in the thoughts of their hearts. He will bring down the powerful from their thrones, and lift high the lowly. He will fill the hungry with good things, and send away the rich empty.”

It is enticing to think of the rich as the absolute rich, people of a certain class as defined by material wealth and maybe accident of birth, but I rather like to consider them the allegedly rich---the rich by their own illusion.  Because I say again, no matter what your current earthly circumstances, they only last a little while.  No matter how high you or I may be flying at the moment, we will all one day sing the blues.

As a deeper examination of the scripture and especially the teachings of Jesus will convey, it is not as much what we have in our hands that will determine our fate as what is in our hearts.  After all, Nicodemus, as indicated in John 3, was a distinguished member of the ruling elite, but he humbly sought guidance from Jesus about his own access to salvation. Joseph of Arimathea was was a man of immense wealth, and like Nicodemus, a member of the Sanhedrin. Yet he was the faithful follower of Jesus who gave up his burial plot so the Master could be buried.  At least the rich young ruler in Mark 10 came to ask “what must I do to inherit eternal life?” even if he thought the price was too steep to pay.  Even Luke, the gospel writer and the chronicler of the early church in the Book of Acts, the only Gentile with writings in the canonized scripture, was an accomplished physician and a man of means.  The fact that these men were “rich” in the earthly sense, but were able to recognize their vulnerability is the essence of the spirit of the godly search.

Each of us are subject to become, in James Weldon Johnson’s words, so drunk with the wine of the world that we forget God.  But if we can dare humble ourselves and acknowledge in the deepest parts of our being that we are nothing without Him, that we are incomplete without Him, that we need him to give us meaning and purpose, that our fate (now and forever) is in His hands, we will be turning toward Him, and He will be turning toward us! 

He has an eye for the lowly.  This doesn’t mean there is no hope for the proud and the puffed up, for the judgmental and the intolerant, but just watch and see the camel squeeze through the eye of the needle, and you will know the “rich” man’s plight.

In the Sermon on the Mount (Matthew 5:3-12), Jesus tells us his preferences in human demeanor and spirit, beginning with these words, “blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of God.”

An Excerpt From the Message on the Sunday After Newtown

“Signs of His Nearness”

Philippians 4:4-7

Beloved, in this season when we celebrate Jesus’ coming into the world, we have spoken since the first Sunday in Advent of a stubborn hope, a hope that followers of Christ must claim, even when there appears to be no grounds for hope in our ordinary lives.  We have been careful to say then and now that we are not to be exempted from the most heinous of trials and set-backs; rather, right in the face of peril, we must keep on rebelliously affirming that the misery that we know now will not last.

Advent hope should not come easy. It should not be painless.  On the road to “hope against hope”, we ought be tested, especially by the enemy of hope, the Devil himself!

Maybe before today, we were tempted to consider these words merely thoughtful and cleaver rhetoric, however the vile and tragic slaughter of the 20 innocent children in Connecticut offers us a specific, unavoidable, living example of how hoping against hope is not a cliché.  When we say hoping against hope, we mean  even when we are confronted with the starkest, most brutal, seemingly insurmountable expression of evil, we will dare to shout out with deep conviction and feeling, godliness will ultimately prevail!

Right in the middle of Advent, an atrocity threatens our hope. Already, there are reports that some people in Newtown are removing their Christmas decorations! The spirit of the Devil is at work, determined to stamp out the hope that is inherent in this season, but we must believe we are not powerless in this situation.  

Indeed, if we are to rely solely on our own resources, we will be crushed by the weight and bewilderment of it all.  But I am reminded of these words from 2 Corinthians 12:9: “My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness.” Therefore I will boast all the more gladly about my weaknesses, so that Christ’s power may rest on me.”

When we are weak, when we are broken, when we are lost for words to say, His power strengthens us to live for another day.  When we feel the most insecure, the most unraveled, the most discombobulated, it is the gospel of the Lord Jesus Christ that fills us with a new resolve not to be defeated by the evil in our midst.  It is the strength of Christ that empowers us to have compassion, not only for the precious victims, but for the lost and troubled soul who perpetrated this dastardly act. 

Adam Lanza is not a monster, as the news media will characterize him---no more than those of us who lack the will to act to uproot the culture of violence that leaves us mourning now, and will cause us to mourn in the future. No, Adam, a young man whom I obviously did not know personally, is a product of a broken and confused spirit that was induced by a world which he experienced as uncaring and un-nurturing.  It is unlikely that we will ever know his conscious motive, but we know he is not alone---as we recall even the most recent merciless rampages in places like Colorado and Virginia Tech and Fort Hood.  Everyday, in the dark corners of our economically marginalized cities, children meet an early and senseless death almost without notice. So something is seriously wrong.

Without excusing individuals for their actions, let us acknowledge to ourselves that something is wrong with a culture that keeps spewing out these cold blooded assaults on unsuspecting crowds. We must acknowledge there is something wrong with a culture that incarcerates so many of its people;  what is wrong with a culture that is still so encapsulated by what Dr. King called “the giants triplets”---racism, poverty and violence. He reminded us that our destinies are intertwined, that we are part of "a single garment of destiny". This is why we share the grief and outrage for the people in Newtown, and whenever some event of this magnitude takes place.

I declare my support for the appropriate federal laws regulating guns and ammunition. And as difficult as it may prove to be to realize these goals, even after this horrific massacre, I believe the more difficult challenge is to win King's prescription for our ailment, which he called a "Revolution of Values". Without such a revolution that will turn the American culture of violence on its head, we can regulate guns, but our national sickness will remain.