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Employing pastoral discretion, we celebrated the Festival of Holy Innocents this Sunday. Traditionally, the First Sunday of Christmas would trump it, I believe. But I think Holy Innocents is important in our day and time. Also, the audio files for these sermons are now available at our Church Blog.
Everyone loves sweet baby Jesus in the manger, says Ricky Bobby. If that reference is lost to you, then know your piety far exceeds that of your pastor. Yet we all know St. Simeon, portrayed in that stained-glass window holding baby Jesus in his arms. He prophesied, “Behold, this child is appointed for the fall and rising of many in Israel, and for a sign that is opposed.” Jesus would be a source of division. No one really expected, however, that it would come while Jesus was still a baby.
In these first days after Christmas, three festivals serve to remind us that sweet baby Jesus is divisive. On December 26, we commemorated the Festival of St. Stephen, the First Martyr. In the earliest days of the Church, he preached the Gospel of Jesus Christ with great power. The religious authorities were threatened and they stoned him to death while a man name Saul stood near and gave his approval. St. Stephen gave his life for sweet little baby Jesus.
On December 27, we remembered the Festival of St. John, Apostle and Evangelist. Unlike St. Stephen, St. John did not die as a martyr. John alone among the apostles died a natural death. Still he was not spared the trials that come with following Christ. He lived the life of a martyr. He was exiled and imprisoned. He was thrown into a cauldron of boiling oil. He suffered greatly for the sake of Christ. He witnessed to Christ until the very end. St. John suffered much for the sake of sweet little baby Jesus.
Today is December 28, the Festival of the Holy Innocents. It is one of the most troubling and disturbing festivals of the Christian calendar as it commemorates the killing of the male babies of Bethlehem. The Greeks thought the death toll was 14,000. The Syrians counted 64,000. Medieval Christians, informed by Revelation, offered 144,000. It was more likely a dozen or so. Does it matter? Numbers are numbers. Statistics don’t mean much. Yet lives have infinite value.
Fear not: for, behold, I bring you good tidings of great joy, which shall be to all people. For unto you is born this day in the city of David a Saviour, which is Christ the Lord.
The Christmas story we just heard from St. Luke is familiar. It has been repeated for nearly 2,000 years, and we have heard it any number of times in our own lifetime. It is so familiar, in fact, it may have lost its intended meaning. The traditional images pass before us like stores and restaurants on a road we travel every day. They are there, but we do not see them. We look right past them. Pregnant Mary on a donkey. A bright star in the sky. No room at the inn. Joseph and Mary in a stable. Cows and sheep and camels. Angels, shepherds, and Wise Men. Baby Jesus in a cradle filled with straw. We have come to know the story so well that we risk not knowing it at all. The worn images suffer from neglect, leaving us with a mythic fairytale, a once-upon-a-time kind of a story. It is sweet, but little more.
Yet we play the game, at least for this evening. What else can we do? We suspect, maybe, that we ought to be filled with a sense of awe and wonder. But why? We realize that peace and joy are the appropriate sentiments for the occasion. For what reason? Well, we do love all the trappings of the season: the carols, the trees and wreathes, the gifts, the parties, even family and friends. We get the opportunity to indulge ourselves. We will spend small fortunes on baubles and trinkets that rarely last until next year. Christmas Day is such a grand time for opening gifts, feasting on ham and watching the latest blockbuster movie. We love to sing out, “Hark! The herald angels sing, ‘Glory to the newborn King; Peace on earth and mercy mild, God and sinners reconciled!,” “I saw mommy kissing Santa Claus underneath the mistletoe last night,” or “Frosty the Snowman was a jolly happy soul with a corncob pipe and a button nose and two eyes made out of coal.” It is all really fun and festive. Still we know Christmas is all about Jesus… and Rudolph… mommy and mistletoe… Frosty… Grandma got run over by some reindeer… Santa Claus… the Virgin Mary, and some elves and angels for good measure. This is all rather hilarious and yet nobody laughs.
Perhaps we have missed the irony of this season. Perhaps all the grating noise of the world has dulled the pointed message of Christmas. Perhaps we have been slowly innoculated with a mild, boring version of Christmas that has built up antibodies in our system to protect us from the scandalous and truly redemptive nature of the night. Perhaps.
Thanks to Willimon for a couple ideas.
The Angel Gabriel has just announced to Mary that she would give birth to the Messiah by the power of the Holy Spirit. Gabriel also told Mary that Elizabeth, her previously barren relative, was now in her sixth month of pregnancy. When Gabriel departed, then so did Mary. In those days, at that particular time, Mary made haste to see Elizabeth. She had big news to share. She was pregnant and it was no ordinary pregnancy. Mary was excited. Since she could not send a text or an email, she hit the road. The journey from Nazareth into the Judean hill country covered 80-100 miles. It would have taken three or four days. Mary was just pregnant, only a week along, when she arrived at the house of Zechariah, whose mouth was still shut because of his unbelief about Elizabeth’s pregnancy. Our Lord Jesus Christ was only days old in the flesh. The infinite, eternal, and almighty Son of God was now a human in the earliest stages of development. Today we would describe this with sterile, even dehumanizing words like a fetus, an embryo, a mass of tissue or a cellular glob. Yet it was no such thing. It was Jesus, the Son of the Most High. It was God incarnate, enfleshed. God was a human person, only a few days old. In the most unlikely mystery, Mary’s womb gave life to the source of all life, the Creator of the heavens and earth. The immortal and incorruptible Christ was nourished from the flesh and blood of a young Jewish girl. Who could expect such a thing? What kind of God would choose to work in such earthy, common, ordinary human ways like pregnancy, an uncomfortable word for some, through a common girl in an insignificant place? Yet this is most reasonable to God.
It is not easy for our rational, analytical and critical minds to accept such a remarkable claim. It makes us uncomfortable. It might even be a tad embarrassing for advanced people like us. After all, December skies stay dark for us. They are not filled with the glory of the heavenly host. The lights in our December nights come from our Griswold-like electric displays. We hear the message of Christmas from satellite radio, not from the angels themselves. We all know full well that virgin girls do not get pregnant and, when they do, well…. We are modern, enlightened people who like our reality straight up. Our world is filled with data, facts, computers, statistics, figures, science and technology. We hear stories about angels, virgins with child, and God in a womb and respond like Joe Friday, “Just the facts ma’am, just the facts.” We have grown skeptical and suspicious. We relegate such tales to the realm of cute, sentimental stories meant to enliven the Christmas spirit of peace, whatever in the world that means. A peanut-sized human God in a womb sounds a tad far-fetched to our modern ears. The incarnation of Christ confronts our perceptions of reality, truth, and fact. It forces us to consider the possibility that our understanding of things may actually be less advanced than that of a first-century Jewish girl. Maybe, just maybe, our modern, scientific background keeps us from comprehending the gracious work and merciful activity of God?
I love YouTube. Springsteen is an absolute genius. These observations come together…. As I put the finishing touches on my sermon this morning, I listened to a mix of his music from my Itunes collection. I heard “The Darkness on the Edge of Town,” one of my favorites. I checked with St. Google and this video from YouTube came up. It is brilliant. Check out the Big Man, Clarence Clemons, Miami Steve, and Roy Bittan. Bruce and E Street are the best show ever. I’ll pay anything for a ticket to his shows and never miss the money. Phoenix in 1992… now that was a concert. Anyway, enjoy the video.
I am beginning to suspect that my faith has weakened over the years.
For many years I was out of the faith altogether. After college, when the grace of the Holy Spirit turned me toward Christ again, I found myself enmeshed in American evangelicalism. I even went so far as to enroll at Dallas Theological Seminary. Radical, bro. I was enthusiastic about my faith. It seemed that God was everywhere and anywhere. I could sing the songs and raise the hands. I remember sitting in chapel and the hammer of the Law being wielded with effectiveness. My heart was torn apart with guilt and shame over past sins. The law killed me. The Gospel, unfortunately, consisted of a new sort of penance, just trying harder to progress or following some principle or direction. I never heard that my sins were forgiven. I never received absolution. Of course this was assumed. I had made a decision for Jesus at some point. Now I just needed to be holier and more pious. I needed to push ahead. At some point, I can’t say when, I began to grow suspicious of evangelicalism. I took courses in the History of Christianity. I read the Church Fathers. I read the Reformers. I read theology and philosophy from different traditions, even Roman Catholic and Orthodox.
Eventually I could no longer remain an evangelical. The questions of catholicity, orthodoxy, liturgy and sacrament would not leave my mind. They haunted me. I returned home from a mission trip to Uzbekistan with the Evangelical Free Church and walked into Zion Lutheran Church in Dallas, TX. There I was forced to my knees to confess my sins (well, not forced) and hear absolution from the pastor in the name of Christ. I heard that my sins were forgiven! The Gospel was applied to me. The sanctuary was a sanctuary. The mass was a mass, although I never would have used that term at that time. The pastor was evangelical with a big “E”. The pastor also was wearing strange clothes, chanting, and moving around as if something important was taking place. I became a member of the LCMS. While I was still planning to seek a PhD in patristic studies, my pastor encouraged me to consider the pastoral ministry. I enrolled in the STM at Concordia in St. Louis and then was accepted into the colloquy program.
After nine months of poverty and study, I was sent on vicarage. I had a preference for the historical forms of worship, but was both flexible and ignorant, at least for a time. I grew more and more uncomfortable, however, with creativity and novelty in worship. At first I giggled during district and circuit gatherings. I was able to get through our contemporary offering. Then I became upset. I was a tad embarrassed for my naivete in thinking the LCMS looked like Zion. Even worse, the LCMS of the future seemed to be the evangelicalism of the present. I thought I had left the emotionalism and manipulation. I thought I had moved to historic, objective forms of the Gospel. I thought I had transitioned to the catholic, orthodox, sacramental, and liturgical church of Western Christendom. I was wrong.
Now I have been made aware that catholicity, orthodoxy, sacrament, and liturgy are matters of preference, or individual definition. They are subjective. They are adiaphora. Historical precedent and the freedom of the Gospel dictate diversity. If we define catholicity to mean that we are simply a part of larger Christendom, then that is sufficient. If orthodoxy is formal subscription to the Book of Concord, then we all are on the same page. If sacrament means that we hold to the doctrinally approved terms, then we are good. If liturgy means we worship Jesus in Spirit and Truth, then anything goes. If we believe in the inerrancy of the Bible, then everything comes together. Of course all such things are subject to the critique of culture and the translation of relevancy.
It had only been some three years since John stood on the banks of the Jordan River, calling the people to repentance; baptizing sinners; and promising the arrival of the Messiah. John was the one foretold by Isaiah, preparing the way of the Lord and crying out, “All flesh is grass, and all its beauty is like the flower of the field. The grass withers, the flower fades when the breath of the LORD blows on it; surely the people are grass. The grass withers, the flower fades, but the word of our God will stand forever.” John knew and believed that only God’s Word would last for eternity. So He preached the hard message of repentance to the people, trusting the Word of God rather than the whims of the people. He did not tell them what they wanted to hear, but what they needed.
Then, by God’s grace, John saw Jesus at the Jordan and pointed, “Behold, the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world.” This Jesus was the Word of God in person. “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.” Now this Word of God, from eternity and to eternity, was standing in the flesh, in time and space, by the dirty water of the Jordan. Even more, Jesus, the Word, wanted John to baptize Him. Initially reluctant, John was obedient and baptized Jesus, when the Father proclaimed, “This is my beloved Son with whom I am well pleased,” and the Holy Spirit descended. John the Baptist had been privy to the most remarkable revelation of the Most Holy Trinity. He bore witness to the Messiah Jesus, the Word become flesh. Few men have ever had such clear access to the impenetrable mysteries of the Trinity and the Incarnation of our Lord.
Grace Lutheran Tulsa’s vicar, Chris Tiews, will preside at the annual Advent Service of the “German American Society of Tulsa” on Sunday, December 14, 2008, at 3 pm. Vicar Tiews has had complete control over the service and the preaching, which will be an excellent opportunity for people to hear the Gospel of Jesus Christ.
This Advent service will be held in the German language at the Society’s historic facilities on 2301 East 15th Street, Tulsa, OK.
The sermon will be posted as an audio file at the Grace Lutheran Tulsa Blog on Monday, December 15.
Thanks to Pr. Esget for language in this homily. However he does not shoulder the blame.
A day of infamy. At about 8:00 in the morning on December 7, 1941, Japanese airplanes came over the skyline and roared into Pearl Harbor. The surprise attack killed more than 2,300 Americans and devastated the battleship fleet of the US Navy, sinking the USS Arizona and capsizing the USS Oklahoma. Even though the rest of the world was at war and tensions ran high between the Japanese Empire and the United States, the attack was unexpected. It shocked and enraged this nation. The next day, President Franklin D. Roosevelt addressed the congress and nation, “Mr. Vice President, Mr. Speaker, members of the Senate and the House of Representatives: yesterday, December 7th, 1941–a date which will live in infamy–the United States of America was suddenly and deliberately attacked by naval and air forces of the Empire of Japan.” The United States was at war. The people of the nation were in a collective outrage. Men enlisted and the nation rallied behind slogans like “Remember December 7th.”
We sit here exactly sixty-seven years later. Some of you still remember that day and time. Many of us learned about it in school. Yet for most of us, whether we were alive then or read about it in books later, the date of December 7th will always be associated with the surprise attack on Pearl Harbor, a day that will live in infamy.
September 11, 2001 is another such date–a day of infamy. On 9-11, hijacked airplanes flew into the towers of the World Trade Center, the Pentagon, and a Pennsylvania field, killing nearly 3,000 people. Some seven years later we still remember where we were and what we were doing when those brutal, evil events unfolded before us live on television. We will remember that date for as long as we live.
The history of the world is filled with days of infamy. Days marked by shocking and horrific events. Days filled with sudden death and destruction. Days of unexpected terror. Days of tragedy and heartbreak. Days of untold distress.
We assume that today, December 7 of 2008, is not one of those days. Today is just another ordinary Sunday. We get up and come to church, maybe, and make our way home to lunch and our typical activities-football, a nap, a walk, read a book, some yard work, or whatever. Perhaps the rush of the season will cause us to break our routine to shop for gifts or decorate our house. Still, we don’t expect much out of today, or most any other day, for that matter. We are mostly content to pass our days with the hope that tragedy stays at bay and comfort is our way.
Bishop Slattery of Tulsa Diocese prayed the Mass ad orientam last Sunday, which made for news. Bill Sherman, the religion writer of the Tulsa World, interviewed him and Msgr Brankin (my good friend). He then gave me a call and we spoke over the phone about the practice and its background. I didn’t know I would get a little section of the article. He quoted me saying, “My kids don’t want to see me up on stage with a guitar.” I’m glad I restrained my usual rant! Here is a link to the article.
