The Power of Emmanuel

Matthew 1:18-25

Now the birth of Jesus the Messiah took place in this way. When his mother Mary had been engaged to Joseph, but before they lived together, she was found to be pregnant from the Holy Spirit.  Her husband Joseph, being a righteous man and unwilling to expose her to public disgrace, planned to divorce her quietly.  But just when he had resolved to do this, an angel of the Lord appeared to him in a dream and said, “Joseph, son of David, do not be afraid to take Mary as your wife, for the child conceived in her is from the Holy Spirit.  She will bear a son, and you are to name him Jesus, for he will save his people from their sins.”  All this took place to fulfill what had been spoken by the Lord through the prophet:

  “Look, the virgin shall become pregnant and give birth to a son, and they shall name him Emmanuel,” which means, “God is with us.”  

When Joseph awoke from sleep, he did as the angel of the Lord commanded him; he took her as his wife but had no marital relations with her until she had given birth to a son, and he named him Jesus.

After the initial flurry of fighting at the beginning of World War I, both the Germans and the Allies dug into trenches that stretched 440 miles across the Western Front from the boarder with Switzerland to the North Sea.  In places, the trenches were just yards apart.  Then… on Christmas Eve… something remarkable happened.  A soldier on the German side put a make shift Christmas tree up on top of his trench and lit it up with candles.  Then he started singing Silent Night.  The English and the French on the other side didn’t know the German words but they knew the tune and they too began to sing.  Then, slowly... here and there... someone would stick their head up out of the trench to see if the other side would shoot.  No one did.  

Make shift signs poked out of the German trenches.  “WE NO FIGHT.  YOU NO FIGHT.”  The English made make shift banners too that said MERRY CHRISTMAS and put them up and waited for a response.  Eventually men climbed out of their trenches and headed across no-man’s-land.  The first thing they did was to retrieve the wounded and then buried their dead together.  They exchanged food, tobacco, and souvenirs with one another, sang more carols with more familiar tunes, and played soccer.   

It has since become known as the Christmas Truce.  It was a truce that didn’t come negotiated by diplomats or ordered from above.  It literally came out of the trenches.  It was VERY unofficial.  In fact, the leadership... the brass... didn’t like it at all... but it happened none the less.  It started with one person... just one tired, lonely, cold, and hungry person who decided to put up a make shift Christmas tree and sing Silent Night instead of choosing to continue the fight.  The choice that one person made... to set up a tree and sing rather than fight... spread up and down the line on both sides.  

All the stories you read about this event use words like “unbelievable,” “impossible,” “unprecedented” or “up side down” to describe the Christmas Truce.  But what if, for just that short amount of time, there between the trenches of war... right there immersed in the power of Emmanuel... the power of “God with us”... what if the world WASN’T up side down at all, but instead... what if in THAT brief time where hatred and anger and violence were set aside... what if in THAT moment, the world was actually… RIGHT SIDE UP?  

Why is it, that we continue to believe that hatred and grudges, divisions and fear are “normal” while the choice to set aside suffering, loneliness, and separation and share a meal and some songs together is “unbelievable” and “up side down”?  This story from over a hundred years ago reminds us, that with the power of Emmanuel, God with us… with the power of faith over fear… those ways of violence, resentment, retribution, and suffering that so many in the world call “normal” are actually NOT AT ALL NORMAL!  Those ways of violence, resentment, retribution, and suffering DO NOT HAVE TO BE OUR WAY ANY MORE! 

Think about it.  If a soldier who had been actively shot, shelled, gassed, and bombed... if a soldier who had been living in the mud and muck of a barbed wire lined trench with not enough to eat or drink... if a soldier who had been through all of that could decide, strengthened by the power of Emmanuel, God with us… to set up a little candle lit tree and sing Silent Night instead of continuing to seek revenge for all he had endured… isn’t there a chance that with the power of Emmanuel… with the power of God with us… with the power of God’s love coming into the world… isn’t it possible that we could do it too?

You and I don’t have a world war to set aside, but our world continues to insist that we must act out of our fear fueled anger, hatred, and resentment with violence.  We saw it at Brown University.  We saw it on the beach in Australia.  We saw it in the malevolent post the president made in the wake of Rob and Michelle Reiner’s murder.  We see it in our country as immigrants and refugees are called garbage and are pulled off the street by our country’s gestapo for the crime of being brown.  And… if we are honest… we see it in ourselves too… as we choose suffering rather than choosing to embrace radical acceptance and forgiveness that, while it can not undo the past, it can and will free us for the future.

We’ve been led and conditioned to believe that holding onto resentments, hurts, and division is “normal”... that getting even is simply how the world works... that any other way would turn the world UPSIDE DOWN.  But this Gospel lesson demands that we hear... that is simply NOT TRUE!  Hate, fear, violence, revenge and grudges AREN’T “normal” and they DON'T bring us life.  This Gospel story reminds us that living our lives in faith rather than fear… practicing lives of love, peace, generosity, compassion and sharing with one another is REALLY how God wants us to live so that we might all live abundantly!    

Over a hundred years ago one soldier... just one… literally stopped a whole World War with just a make shift Christmas tree and a song.  The power of Emmanuel, it turned out, had the power to transform the most violent place in the WHOLE WORLD into a place of peace.  One soldier, deciding to do something different.  Is there any reason you and I could not choose, right here... right now, to do the same?  

May the power of Emmanuel, God with us, remind us that we do NOT have to live the way kings and kaisers, presidents and pundits proclaim is “normal.”  May the power of Emmanuel, God with us, remind us that we can choose a life of faith rather than a life of fear.  And may the power of Emmanuel, God with us, remind us that we can choose (regardless of the horrors happening around us) to live the Way of  Emmanuel… the way of “God with us”… the way of the Prince of Peace.  Amen.

Yes or No

Matthew 11:2-11

When John heard in prison what the Messiah was doing, he sent word by his disciples and said to him, “Are you the one who is to come, or are we to wait for another?” Jesus answered them, “Go and tell John what you hear and see: the blind receive their sight, the lame walk, the lepers are cleansed, the deaf hear, the dead are raised, and the poor have good news brought to them. And blessed is anyone who takes no offense at me.”

As they went away, Jesus began to speak to the crowds about John: “What did you go out into the wilderness to look at? A reed shaken by the wind? What then did you go out to see? Someone dressed in soft robes? Look, those who wear soft robes are in royal palaces. What then did you go out to see? A prophet? Yes, I tell you, and more than a prophet. This is the one about whom it is written, ‘See, I am sending my messenger ahead of you, who will prepare your way before you.’ Truly I tell you, among those born of women no one has arisen greater than John the Baptist; yet the least in the kingdom of heaven is greater than he.

When my dad asked a “yes or no” question, there were only two acceptable answers.  You guessed it… “yes” or “no”.  “Did you leave the door open?” could NOT be answered with, “I had my hands full” or “I was just putting something out there for a second.”  “Yes” or “No”... that was it!  So even now whenever I hear a “yes or no” question NOT being answered with either a “yes” or a “no” I start to sweat!

John the Baptist asked Jesus a very clear “yes or no” question… “Are you the one we have been waiting for or are we supposed to keep on waiting” but Jesus did NOT give a “yes or no” answer.  Instead Jesus said, “Tell John that the blind see, the lame walk, lepers are made clean, the deaf hear, the dead are raised and the poor have good news brought to them.”  Frankly, Jesus would have been crucified MUCH earlier if he had tried that with my dad, but for whatever reason, Jesus’ strange and roundabout answer seemed to work for John.

My guess is that it worked for John, because Jesus answered, not with words but with his ACTIONS, and out in the desert, John had been calling people to do exactly THAT.  Not to simply answer John with their words but with ACTION.  The word “repent,” literally means to turn around and go another way.  For John, thoughts, ideas, and words were fine, but ACTION… THAT’S what he was really looking for.  So when Jesus responded to John’s question by telling him the ACTIONS he had been doing, that, I think spoke louder to John than any words ever could.

On top of that it was an impressive list!  People were given sight.  Not just eyeball sight, but healed of their inability to see God at work in their lives and in the world.  The lame walk.  Not just legs working again, but people healed of their fear of living in the world God’s Way.  Lepers were made clean.  Not just the skin condition healed, but anything that labeled a person as unclean, unfit, unwelcome, and unwanted for any reason; race, gender, nationality, ability, who they loved, how they saw themselves, their class.  ANYONE the world had made into an outcast, the forgotten, or the lost were now welcomed, included, valued, honored, and made to feel worthy.  The deaf hear.  Not just ears working again, but people able to finally hear and embody the truth that God was at work, that God loved all of creation, and that God was making sure that all of creation would be whole again.  The dead were raised.  Not just literally like the woman’s son or Lazarus would be.  But people who had been called garbage and treated as unworthy or undeserving of life were being lifted up, included, and given life in abundance… a life of meaning, purpose, dignity, respect and love that flowed freely from the Divine… a life meant to begin now and never, ever end!

THEN… at the end of this list (which, by the way, is where people in Jesus’ day put the most important item when they made lists) THE POOR HAVE GOOD NEWS BROUGHT TO THEM.  That Good News is God’s vision for how the world is supposed to work and God’s vision for the world is that it would be a place where those who struggle to feed their families, find a place to live, find belonging, and live unafraid will have all they need, not just to get by, but to thrive! 

The GOOD NEWS of this lesson is that the coming Messiah is a Messiah who brings God’s vision to life by bringing God’s love and compassion to the darkest parts of every human life and into every corner of creation.  As disciples of that Messiah, you and I are called to keep those same ACTIONS that Jesus brought to John, moving throughout the world through us.   

That may sound like an overwhelming ask, but we can do it because Jesus has first healed OUR blindness, and now we can SEE those who have been forgotten.  Jesus healed our lameness, now we can bring God’s love out into the world.  Jesus healed our separation, so now we can re-member the people we encounter and show them they too belong.  Jesus healed our deafness so that now we can hear the voices of those in crisis, do what we can to meet the needs of that particular crisis and then work to change the world so that people’s lives are no longer just one crisis after another. 

John the Baptist wasn’t really interested in the words people brought out to him in the wilderness.  John the Baptist was not impressed by those who just threw “thoughts and prayers” at the world’s injustices or in the direction of people in pain.  What John the Baptist was interested in were people turning away from their lifelong walk into selfishness, arrogance, self importance, cruelty, brutality, and a false sense of superiority and beginning to walk in a new direction.  A walk in the direction of compassion, kindness, self sacrifice, humility, healing, generosity, grace, and love for the other.  

The answer that Jesus gave to John was neither a “yes” nor a “no” but to John the answer Jesus gave him was crystal clear.  Jesus was indeed the Messiah because John could see that Jesus walked the Way the Messiah walked.  May we too, walk that Way… toward the Truth… and into a Life of abundance for all people.  Amen.   

Give 'em the Axe

Isaiah 11:1-10

A shoot shall come out from the stump of Jesse,

  and a branch shall grow out of his roots.

 The spirit of the Lord shall rest on him,

  the spirit of wisdom and understanding,

  the spirit of counsel and might,

  the spirit of knowledge and the fear of the Lord.

  His delight shall be in the fear of the Lord.

He shall not judge by what his eyes see

  or decide by what his ears hear,

  but with righteousness he shall judge for the poor

  and decide with equity for the oppressed of the earth;

 he shall strike the earth with the rod of his mouth,

  and with the breath of his lips he shall kill the wicked.

  Righteousness shall be the belt around his waist

  and faithfulness the belt around his loins.

The wolf shall live with the lamb;

  the leopard shall lie down with the kid;

 the calf and the lion will feed together,

  and a little child shall lead them.

  The cow and the bear shall graze;

  their young shall lie down together;

  and the lion shall eat straw like the ox.

  The nursing child shall play over the hole of the asp,

  and the weaned child shall put its hand on the adder’s den.

They will not hurt or destroy

  on all my holy mountain,

 for the earth will be full of the knowledge of the Lord

  as the waters cover the sea.

On that day the root of Jesse shall stand as a signal to the peoples; the nations shall inquire of him, and his dwelling shall be glorious.

I want us to look at that lesson from Isaiah BUT (here’s the hard part) I want you to resist connecting Isaiah’s words to Jesus right off the bat.  I know that’s hard and Handel’s little ear worm called “The Messiah” (you might have heard of it) makes that even harder.  But Isaiah had something important to stay to HIS people in THEIR time, 700 years before Jesus was even a gleam in Mary’s eye.  I think looking at what Isaiah said to THEM might be something we shouldn’t miss.  

In Isaiah’s day, the political leadership was only in it for their own gain… for their own enrichment… for their own power.  In Isaiah’s day, government officials manipulated the legal process so much that the innocent poor were slaughtered while the guilty rich were pardoned.  In Isaiah’s day, the obscenely wealthy held all the positions of power and shamelessly wrote oppression into the law itself to gain more wealth and power. 

It was into that sort of obscene and seemingly unchangeable political reality that Isaiah spoke to his people.  What he told them was that God still… has a preference.  A very clear, very focused, very consistent, very long standing preference… for those in authority to lead their people with justice.  And not just any kind of justice, but a justice that was biased toward the poor… a justice that brought equity to the oppressed.  This wasn’t just a “spiritual” sort of justice or an equity only to be realized in the “sweet by and by” either.  God, Isaiah told his people, had a preference for justice and equity for all people… NOW and in EVERY part of life! 

God’s desire was for leaders to use their power to make sure that everyone… EVE-RY-ONE had enough… enough to eat, enough shelter, enough dignity, enough respect, enough purpose, enough security.  AND, Isaiah told them, if the current administration doesn’t care for everyone, but instead cares only for themselves… for their own gain… for their own enrichment… for their own power… if those in office fail to do justice FOR the poor and instead exploit the poor for their own gain… God notices that… God gets angry about that… and God will change that!    

What God wants and what God will have, Isaiah told his people, are leaders who pay attention to and follow the direction of the Spirit of the Lord… the same wind that blew over creation… the same breath of God that brought about life.  What God wants, and what God will have, are leaders who honor that breath… who allow themselves to be led by the Spirit with wisdom and understanding.  What God wants and what God will have, are leaders who move their nations toward God’s preference of justice for the poor and relief for the oppressed.  What God wants and what God will have, are leaders with a humility sized appropriately for someone who has been given the humbling responsibility of caring for an entire nation!  

Isaiah also made it clear in the passages leading up to today’s lesson that any leader who falls SHORT of that Divine standard will get the ax, be left a lifeless stump, and that God will bring about something new.  But seeing the injustice, the corruption, the unbelievably brazen, unrepentant, and uncaring ugliness of their leaders go on seemingly unchecked… I imagine that Isaiah’s people really had begun to wonder… DOES God still care?  Will God still act?  Will things change?  Isaiah told them that even though it may seem beyond fantastical given their current reality, God would, in God’s time, and in God’s way bring about change.  It may feel, Isaiah told them, as likely to happen as a leopard snuggling in for a snooze with a baby goat.  As easy to imagine as lions and bears going vegan, and as believable in the moment as poisonous snakes becoming this year’s number one Christmas toy… but God’s will… will be done, on earth as it is in heaven.   

I’m sure Isaiah’s people would have rather had a magical and immediate fix for the horror in which they were living.  I get that.  But that wasn’t what Isaiah gave them, mostly because that simply wasn’t Isaiah’s to give.  All Isaiah could give them was the assurance that they, and their situation, had been genuinely and fully SEEN by God, that God still cared, and that God would act.  

Like Isaiah, I too wish I had a magical and immediate fix for the the injustice, the corruption, the unbelievably brazen, unrepentant, and uncaring ugliness in which WE are living.  I can’t give that to you any more than Isaiah could give that to his people.  All that is mine to give you is the same assurance Isaiah gave to his people… that we too have been genuinely and fully SEEN by God, that God still deeply cares, and that God will bring about change.  

I know it’s not the immediate fix we all would prefer, but my hope is that being reminded that we have been SEEN by GOD… by GOD, no less… will give us all the courage to live out God’s preference for justice, kindness, and humility in the few square feet in which we stand in any particular moment of the day.  Then… standing together in justice… in kindness… in humility we might realize that together we have the power to continue to fend off the broods of vipers and begin to understand that through our standing together in justice, kindness, and humility, God is already changing the world… for good.  Amen.