The Word you've been waiting for (Christmas Eve 2011)

[The Gospel of John, chapter 1, verses 1-14, precede the homily.]

I don’t know about you, but we seem spend our day deluged by words.  Checking my Facebook account alone keeps me awash in words, some wise, some less so.  You can learn just about anything via a quick Google search.  Then let’s not forget the conversations around home, work, and even the text messaging on our cellphones.  Finally, just to feel a little old school, there’s still that old fashioned experience of getting a letter in the mail.  (Yes, that’s right: an actual letter from somebody other than a credit card company that can’t wait to share that you are “pre-approved!”). 

At the end of the day, you’ve been around more words than you think, as the words add up from the breakfast time perusal of the newspaper, that report that must be read by noon, the dozen emails that rolled in while you were trying to respond others, the status updates that pop up on FB, and then, last but not least, a chapter or two from the novel you’re reading just before going to sleep.  

We get through the day with words swirling around us, dancing across the computer screen and swirling around our ears (provided you can get your ear buds to actually fit in your ears!).  Awash in words, we start filtering out the ones that don’t seem that important.  Often, we err by ignoring more words than we should, ironically becoming inattentive to the words around us, tuning out most of everything in the name of a rare moment of silence.  We even hope we got through a day without hearing words that trouble us (and hopefully avoided saying words that trouble others).   Words are plentiful, yet as the old saying goes, talk can be cheap….

In the midst of our world, the gospel of John yearns to be heard, telling his story of Jesus, the Word of God.  Bringing John’s gospel out at Christmas time can be a hard sell, as he does not tell a story of Jesus being born with the “Christmas Pageant” of shepherds, kings, and angelic choirs floating above the manger.  You read John’s gospel, and you think now here’s a guy who marches to the beat of a different drummer.  (And not the one who goes “ra-rumpa-rum-pum”.)

John’s gospel opens with these words set up in the lofty clouds above.  It’s not a straightforward story of Jesus being born.  Instead, we get this philosophical take on Jesus as “the Word of God”, pre-existing before Creation itself, divinity taking on humanity and not just as if slipping into an acting role.  Here, we are told Jesus became one of us, part of the limitations and the frailty, willfully accepting life as it is, including pain, suffering and even death.   

When the Word becomes flesh, our English translations falter in saying that the Word “dwelled among us”.  The Greek drives the point home much closer:  “the Word became flesh and pitched its tent among us”.  In other words, the Word digs in his heels in and lives in the midst of life as we know it.  This is a Word that is right in the middle of the conversations we have with what it means to be human.  John 1 pushes the envelope of the image we have of God as divinity aloof, off up in the clouds. 

The faith of Christianity welcomes the hard questions we wrestle with: questions of life, death, and the meaning behind it.  Life causes us to ask all manner of questions that make us weep or laugh.  Some questions we keep close to the vest, confiding with only our closest of friends.  And, quite frankly, we harbor a few questions that keep us up at night, wrestling with them late into the wee hours of the night. 

Christianity claims that such questions find their dialogue partner in the form of Jesus, the Word made flesh.  The gospel affirms that Jesus is to be found in the midst of those who harbor doubt within, those who grieve, those who hurt, those who are marginalized, and those who feel forgotten.  Jesus is with us, each step of the way, because he walked our way through birth, life, and death already.  The Word became flesh and lived with the same wonders and woes that we know firsthand.  

May the Word be heard and known in your life.  AMEN.

Christmas Eve sermon 2009

        As the Christmas season goes by year after year, I grow in my affection for the old carol “Joy to the World”. This is a hymn needing the organ with all the stops pulled out, and everybody singing with gusto.  It is most certain; “Joy to the World” is not a quiet little ole hymn.

        Thus, when I plan worship, I hold this hymn back for Christmas Eve or the Sunday just after Christmas.  It is good to have a crowd to join together voices on this hymn.  So, after these words of proclamation are given, I invite you to rise and sing our hymn in praise of Christ. 

Whether walking down the street, humming it to yourself, or stuck in an elevator somewhere with the Muzak version playing faintly overhead, you know this song.  (And you quietly give thanks that there is no muzak playing overhead right now.)  Tonight, we sing this hymn in its intended place:  the church at worship.

Most people associate this hymn with the manger, perhaps a lullaby, though boisterous, of the Babe born in Bethlehem. “Joy to the World!” is drawn more the good parts of the book of Revelation rather than a retracing of the gospels’ nativity stories. The hymn’s writer Isaac Watts has a different intention, offering these words in celebration of Christ’s return. Watts looks up at the heavens above than down in a lowly cattle stall.  “Joy to the World!” is less about what happened in Bethlehem and more about the return of Christ to the world at a time yet to come.

Contrary to the veritable cottage industry of books on “the End Times” or those doom-loving preachers on the AM dial, the end vision is not fire and brimstone raining down.  Isaac Watts stresses “the End” as something good for us all.  This hymn captures the true vision of the biblical witness: a world long suffering shall be endued with Christ’s truth and grace.  

In the words of this hymn, Isaac Watts gifts us with this shimmering vision of a world that shall be transformed, not by any single nation or ideology of the day.  In the end, Christ shall return and make all things well.  “Joy to the world!” is a declaration of radical hope: Christ shall bring to accountability the evil of this world and give the world long-yearned justice and peace.

I have seen a glimmer, a foretaste of this vision.  For the past three summers, I have traveled to annual meetings of the Baptist World Alliance, a global gathering of the many and diverse Baptist denominations.  Around the table (where, if you do not know, you will always find Baptists around the table), I have spoken with Baptist leaders from countries dealing with great hardship and challenge.  You spend time talking with a young man whose home country is considered one of the most politically unstable countries in Africa.  You have a cup of coffee with a woman from India who works with women and children caught up in prostitution or victim of other forms of global human trafficking.  You find yourself roommates with a young pastor from an Eastern European country, still recovering from years under a repressive communist government.  In turn, I tell your story, a small congregation working in a rural community where the economic recession is experienced in the form of food and fuel crises, employment challenges, a high incidence of domestic violence per capita, and the list of what’s not right around these parts goes on. 

These stories start adding up, all signs of the world’s pressing needs and the great difficulty the peoples of the world face.  What astonishes, and admittedly humbles me as well, is the resolute commitment of these varied folks from around the world.  Somehow, despite all of the differences and disparities, there is a deep trust in the Christian faith.  What these folk have in common transcends the political, cultural, and economic barriers through which we typically see and order the world.  Arising above the pain, yet not numbed to it, I see a thread of hope interweaving through the stories around the global table: wonderful, abundant, life affirming hope that empowers and enables people to stand up in the midst of the world’s chaos and pain and be conduits of great mercy and strength.  This common thread of hope is grounded in Christ Jesus.

In a time where a new generation of best-sellers decry the validity of religion, in a time where the church in North America myopically dwells more on why these pews tonight are not “standing room only” and less on the mission field just outside their front door, Christians around the world testify mightily to the faith that Jesus taught, the essentials of discipleship grounded in a different ethic:  a deep love of God and neighbor, a commitment to personal and communal wellbeing, and a belief in peacemaking and reconciliation, which goes against the grain of conventional wisdom claiming partisanship and might are the only tools to effect change. 

Our faith calls us to be Christ’s hands and feet in the world, part of the reseeding of the world where, in Watts’ words, “thorns and sorrows grow”.   The church at worship sings this hymn “Joy to the World” not as a happy little carol meant for a passing warm feeling of yuletide joy.  This sort of hymn should thunder with the people of God claiming a core belief:  Christ is coming again!  We are waiting with expectation.  Yet, as a people who wait, we also put our backs into the needs of the here and now.  Discipleship in Christ Jesus is not about passive waiting.  The world is not right, and we want to see it changed, not just down the road, but also in the here and now. 

“Joy to the world!” becomes our reminder that we live in-between times of the “not yet” and “yet to come” as a people who nonetheless live with hearts and minds engaged in this world’s problems and yearn to be part of healing the world, in our little corner and around the world, in ways great and small, temporary and long-lasting.   First Baptist is learning this anew, as we close a year of continuing transformation, becoming a church serving as “a place for healing, community involvement, and spiritual grounding”.  We end 2009 with “a full house”, our facilities now providing previously under-utilized space for community non-profits providing critical services: medical care access for the uninsured, disability advocacy and support, help to families affected by domestic violence or other crises, a place where persons dealing with personal or economic challenges can find help and support, especially through initiatives our congregants have taken on, such as the sewing class or the cooking skills class, donating faithfully to local food pantries and social service outreach organizations. 

Indeed, look back to where we have been and where we are today in our efforts to provide a credible witness to the gospel to this hurting community and world, and indeed, sing “joy” to the Christ who is coming!

So it is “with truth and grace” that Isaac Watts envisions Christ coming back.  This Christ shall arrive with the resounding joy of a world welcoming back the One who shall make all things well, who shall take to task recalcitrant nations, who shall bring about a commonweal more glorious than any vision for the world humanity could come up with on its own.

May we be the church at worship and sing “Joy to the world!”