Dropping Our Nets

Here is my sermon from Sunday.  The text was Matthew 4:12-23:

Today we have a fish story to tell.  I’m sure that all of us have heard at least one fish story in our lives, and most of us have probably even told one or two ourselves, about the one that got away or about how big the fish, which the person hearing the story never saw, really was.  There’s a great scene in the movie Dave, in which Kevin Kline, who is pretending to be the president, has his arms in a machine which replicates his movements using enormous robot arms, and so he stretches his arms out and says “I once caught a fish this big,” and of course his fish story is amplified by the mechanical arms.  I wanted to show that clip this morning, but when I did a search for it on YouTube, I didn’t find it, although I did find out that there are apparently a lot of people named Dave who fish and have posted things on YouTube.

For some reason, fishing tends to bring out these stories, more than most other activities in which we engage.  That most famous of all authors, anonymous, once wrote “An answer to this question, is greatly what I wish; does fishing make men liars, or do only liars fish?”[1]  I’m going to be honest, I don’t like fishing.  No offense to those of you who do, but to me, fishing is about as exciting as watching paint dry.  But the Bible is full of fish stories, and today we have one of the most well known.  Of all of the fish stories we know, today’s is one of the biggest.  In fact, this passage, or at least the line about making the disciples “fishers of men”, is probable one of the most famous.

The passage begins, first with the announcement of John the Baptist’s arrest, which will lead to his execution and serves as an example, which will be played out again, of what discipleship looks like, the arrest leads to the beginning of Jesus’ public ministry in Galilee.  Next we are told that Jesus began to proclaim “Repent, for the kingdom of God has come near,” which is at the core of Jesus’ message, then we have the calling of the first disciples, followed by a summary of Jesus’ activities in proclaiming the reign of God which he will follow throughout the remainder of his ministry.

Descending Like A Dove

Here is my sermon from Sunday.  The text was John 1:29-42:

Last week we heard the story of Jesus’ baptism from Matthew, at the end of which we are told that the Holy Spirit in the form of a dove descended upon him.  This week we hear a similar account, except that this time it is John the Baptist who is reportedly telling the story to us, before moving into telling us John’s version of the calling of the first disciples.  Next week we move back into Matthew’s account with Jesus calling the first disciples there, and so I am going to hold off on talking about the calling until next week, and instead we are going to look at the Holy Spirit, because that is one of the questions I hear a lot is who and what is the Holy Spirit.

Now for those of you who grew up using the King James Bible, or liturgies based on the King James, you probably know of the Holy Spirit as the Holy Ghost.  That is still the language we sing as part of the doxology each week after the offering is received (praise father son and Holy Ghost).  The term was changed for several reasons.  The first is that our understanding of ghost is a little different from that of the 17th century, and we don’t want people either thinking of something scary or even something nice, like Caspar the friendly Holy Ghost.  The second reason is that spirit is sort of a closer approximation to the Greek and the Hebrew terms that it is being used.

One of the reasons we don’t understand the Holy Spirit is because the church has not always been very clear about it.  In the Nicene Creed, which was the church’s formalization of Trinitarian theology, in which we say that there is only one God, but God has three parts, it originally said “We believe in the Holy Spirit.”   That is what is still contained in the Apostle’s Creed, but that doesn’t really give us any information.  Later at the Council of Constantinople in 381, this was added to so that it included, “we believe in the Holy Spirit, the lord and giver of life, who proceeds from the father and the son, who with the father and son is worshipped and glorified, who has spoken through the prophets.”  In the doctrinal standards of the United Methodist Church, we state that we believe in “The Holy Ghost, proceeding from the father and the Son, is of one substance, majesty and glory with the Father and the Son, very and eternal God.”  Those are a little fuller statement, but they have more to do with the Spirit’s relation in the trinity rather than about what the Spirit does or how we experience it.

Down to the River

Here is my sermon from Sunday.  The text was Matthew 3:13-17:

A man is stumbling through the woods, totally drunk, when he comes upon a preacher baptizing people in the river.   He proceeds to walk into the water to see what’s going on. The preacher turns around and is almost overcome by the smell of alcohol, but asks the man, "Are you ready to find Jesus?"  The drunk answers, "Yes, I am." So the preacher grabs him and dunks him in the water.   He pulls him up and asks him, "Brother have you found Jesus?"  The drunk replies, "No."  The preacher shocked at the answer, dunks him into the water again for a little longer.  He again pulls him out of the water and asks again, "Have you found Jesus my brother?"   The man again answers, "No,”  By this time the preacher is at his wits end and dunks the drunk in the water again -- - but this time holds him down  until the man begins flailing his arms and legs, and then the preacher pulls him up and again asks, "For the love of God have you found Jesus?"  The drunk wipes his eyes and catches his breath and says to the preacher, "No, are you sure this is where he fell in?"

Today we celebrate the baptism of Jesus, and so I thought it would be the appropriate time to teach you more about baptism then you’ve ever known, and maybe more than you’ve ever wanted to know, in help us understand what baptism is and what it does so that it might begin to make more sense and give more meaning to us.

So where did baptism come from and where did it begin?  Most people’s answer is that it begins with John the Baptizer, as we have in today’s scripture.  John is calling people out to the Jordan River to be baptized in repentance of their sins, but baptism, or at least a similar practice, is older than John.  In Judaism, in order to be ritually pure, people, both men and women, would have to enter into what is known as a mikvah in order to be ritually cleansed.  There were actually mikvah at the entrance to the temple in Jerusalem that people would enter so they would be ritually clean when they entered the Temple grounds. In addition, some Jewish sects required that gentile converts not only be circumcised, but that they must also take a ritual bath in order to be cleansed and die to who they were and be reborn into something new.  Orthodox Judaism still requires this for converts.

Three People from Somewhere

Here is my sermon from Sunday.  The text was Matthew 2:1-12:

Today represents the last vestiges of Christmas.  Kids go back to school tomorrow, and adults who have been off for the holidays return to work.  People have taken down their trees and the ornaments and decorations have been packed up and returned to storage, or maybe like me everything has been piled in one location waiting to be packed up.  The surprises and the excitement of the season are gone, along with the songs and the decorations, and yet today we celebrate epiphany, which represents the official end of the Christmas season, this is another one of those times in which the church is out of sync with culture.

Some of you have heard me say this before, as much as Fox News might like to talk about a war on Christmas, I have to be in agreement with Diana Butler Bass that it’s not a war on Christmas, it’s a war on Advent, because Christmas doesn’t end on December 25, Christmas begins in December 25, and it officially ends tomorrow with Epiphany.  Epiphany, means appearance or manifestation, and it commemorates the arrival of the wisemen as the manifestation of Jesus to the gentiles.  In many cultures, especially in Latin countries, Epiphany is more important of a Holiday than is Christmas and is celebrated through gift-giving and parties.  In the Orthodox church, it is the third most important day of the year following only Easter and Pentecost, and for many years the Orthodox church celebrated Christmas not on December 25, but instead on January 6 and there are still some churches which follow that tradition.

Setting the Scene

Here is my sermon from Sunday.  The text was Matthew 2:13-23:

Today is one of those days when I don’t like the lectionary, because we have to take stories out of order.  Next week we will hear of the arrival of the magi or the wise-men, because next Sunday is Epiphany Sunday, the day we celebrate the arrival of the wise men.  But today’s passage tells us what happens after the wise men have already left, and there is so much going on in today’s passage that we could actually cover this for several weeks and still not plumb all the way to the bottom of its depths.  Matthew is doing something very specific in these stories, which are commonly referred to as the flight to Egypt and also as the slaughter of the innocents, that is crucial to understand for the entirety of the telling of his particular gospel message, and since we will be working our way through Matthew’s gospel this year, it’s important to know what Matthew is doing, how he is setting the scene not only for the rest of his gospel but also for who he is saying that Jesus is.

The only two gospels which tell a birth narrative are Matthew and Luke, and their stories are very different from each other because they have different things about Jesus they want to emphasize.  Matthew begins his story with a genealogy.  Compare that to Luke who’s genealogy doesn’t come until the third chapter.  In addition, Luke’s genealogy begins with Joseph, whose father he says was Heli, and he works backward to Adam.  In Matthew, on the other hand, he begins with Abraham, who it should be noted comes from the East, just like the wise men, and works down to Jacob, who is the father of Joseph, the husband of Mary.  Now think back, why are Joseph and Jacob significant?  That’s right; Jacob is the father of Joseph back in the story of the patriarchs in Genesis.  And what do we know about Joseph?  He was sold into slavery in Egypt and rises in power there, and what did Joseph become known for?  For interpreting dreams? And then what happens?  He saves his family by bringing them down to Egypt during a famine in Canaan, where they live; they are saved by Joseph, the son of Jacob, who interprets dreams which allows him to save his family by bringing them to Egypt.  And so what has Matthew just told us about this Joseph?  I see some light bulbs going off in your heads.  Joseph, the son of Jacob, has an angel appear to him in a dream, which he then follows, and first marries Mary, then he has another dream, leading his family into Egypt in order to save them, and later a third dream that tells him that it is safe to go back to Israel.

Anonymous In A Crowd

Here is my sermon from Christmas Eve.  The text was Luke 2:1-20:

As we just added Jesus to our nativity, we completed the typical scene found in nearly every nativity, not matter what the material or the subject matter.  There was a list making its way around Facebook this year that purported to list the 50 worst or weirdest nativity sets, which some of you may have seen.  There were the typical weird ones, the dog or cat nativity, ones with frogs and ducks; I think the dragons and the one carved out of spam were the worst, although nothing really says Christmas to me like Jesus made from a shotgun shell.  But as I was thinking about nativity sets, and what sort of spurred the idea for this message, I was thinking of the figures who sort of play critical and important roles in the Christmas story.

If we were to tell the story, or to create a set, without the shepherds, you might ask what was going on where they were, after all they are the ones that the angels make the announcement to as we just heard from Luke.  Likewise if we were to have a nativity scene with the shepherds, but without the magi, also known as the three wise-men, you might also wonder where they were.  We need them because they are the ones who bring the gifts, one of the reasons we share gifts at Christmas.  Now the fact that this combines two different stories, one from Matthew and one from Luke, and that the shepherds and the magi never would have been there at the same time doesn’t matter, we need them in the scene together.  So we need the shepherds, we need the wise-men, of course we need Mary, nothing happens with the mother, and obviously Jesus must be there, they all play critical roles.  But that leaves Joseph.  Is Joseph necessary for this story?  What role does he play?  While he certainly does things, in the words of the old Negro spiritual, he never says a mumbling word.  His role in the scene seems to be to simply be there to look adoringly at a child that is not even his own.  If Joseph wasn’t to be there would it matter?  He is truly anonymous in a crowd.

Love All

Here is my sermon from Sunday.  This was the concluding message on the Advent Conspiracy.

Several years ago there was a survey done of parents of teenage children who were attending church.  There were asked a series of questions, but one of those was what events in the lives of their children might make it likely that they would stop attending church.  The number one answer of parents of teenage girls, was for their daughter to become pregnant, and the number one answer for parents of teenage boys, was for their son to be arrested.  I can understand the sentiment behind those answers as they are both less than ideal situations, ones that leave at least a hint of embarrassment and shame.  I can remember that what most struck me about those poll results was how incongruous those results were with the God we worship.  I know that there are churches in which if that was to happen, that many members of the church would turn on those parents or shun them, because that’s just not what happens in the church, but what they have forgotten was that Mary was maybe no older than13-14 when she became pregnant and married Joseph, in other words she was a teenage mother.  I am sure that was shame and embarrassment in Mary’s family, and perhaps some shunning as well.  For a young girl to become pregnant outside of marriage, or for any girl, was a violation of Jewish law, punishable by death.  We are told that when Joseph found out she was pregnant that he wanted to put her away quietly, that is not bring her to public shame, but instead married her after being told what to do by an angel.

So we worship Jesus the son of a teenager mother, and we also worship Jesus who was arrested, tried, found guilty and executed by the state, that is he was a criminal in the eyes of the state and all those who were concerned with upholding law and order.  And so it makes me really wonder about us as a church, about us a Christians, about us as disciples, especially at this time of the year, that parents of teenage children might not feel welcome if their daughter were to become pregnant or their son was to be arrested  Have we so boxed in and constrained the gospel message that it’s become too safe, too palatable?  Have we made Jesus like this this bendable figure, lovely to look at and delightful to play with, but no longer dangerous or radical?  The very symbol we use, that we look at every Sunday, that we wear around our necks, is the means of execution.  Have we sanitized the cross, or lost the scandal of the cross, as Paul said?  And then I wonder, what is the gospel, the good news that we are proclaiming if that is the case?

Give More

Here is my sermon from Sunday.  This is part three in our series on the Advent Conspiracy.

For the past few weeks we’ve been talking about the Advent Conspiracy and its four pillars of worshipping fully, spending less, giving more and loving all.  I went out looking for this program, or at least something like it, because of a comment that was made after the Thanksgiving sermon I gave five years ago.  I can remember that I said one of the great ironies of Thanksgiving is that we give thanks for what we have, give thanks for God’s blessings in our lives, to basically say that what we have is good, and then we go out the next day to get all the things we just said we didn’t need.  I even made an accurate prediction that it was only a matter of time before stores were open on Thanksgiving, and lo it came to pass.  But in that message I said that there are really only two ways we can look at what we have.

The first is to say that we are not satisfied, that we need more stuff, and if that’s the case then we need to go get more stuff, and we should also try and examine why we feel that way, what purpose is the stuff serving in our lives, what is it trying to fill.  Or, we can say that we are satisfied with what we have, that we don’t need anything else, and if that is the case then we should stop accumulating, stop buying things we don’t truly need.  We need food, but we don’t need a bigger television, we need to put gas in the car, but we don’t need to buy a new car.  The problem is that while we might be able to stop getting more stuff for a little while, sooner or later we would go out and start accumulating again.  It’s somehow ingrained in us, and it’s certainly pushed on us, we are the most marketed to people in the history of the world, and as much as we might like to claim that we are immune to it, the simple truth is we are not.  We proved that last week when you all completed Alka Selzter’s famous commercial “I can’t believe I ate the whole thing,” which was broadcast in 1972.

Spend Less

Here is my sermon from Sunday.  This is part two in our series on the Advent Conspiracy.

I want you to think of your favorite Christmas memories.  Do you have something in mind?  I’m willing to bet that most of them have nothing to do with a gift you received, even if you think back to when you were a child.  There may have been a bike you received, or some other special gift stood out, but most of our favorite memories are about times we have spent with family and friends doing things together.  In fact, if I asked you to write down 5-10 things you received for Christmas last year, I bet that few of us would actually be able to complete the list.  According to a recent poll, 62% of people claim that spending time with family is the most important thing to do at Christmas, compared with only 2% who said it was about receiving presents, and yet what do our Christmas celebrations seem to be about, what does a large portion of our time at Christmas seem to be about?  To presents.  We are constantly told that Christmas is all about the gift giving, that it’s all about the mall, and buying as many things as we can because if we don’t then our loved ones won’t really be happy, and they won’t think we love them, and our children end up in counseling because we didn’t get them whatever the hottest gift is this year, and it will all be our fault.  Even though we know these things are not true, year after year we keep doing the same things.

I have been talking about the Advent Conspiracy in churches now for four years and their four pillars which are to worship fully, spend less, give more and love all.  Next week I’ll tell the story of why and how I can across this program, but every year I get one of three responses.  The first is that I don’t understand Christmas or have negative feelings about Christmas and because of that I want to ruin it for everyone else; I am a Grinch who wants to kill Christmas.  Nothing could be further from the truth.  I love Christmas.  I listen to Christmas music in July, we have special sheets and dishes and glassware for Christmas, and last year our house was named best decorated house in Melrose, more than 5200 lights, yes I am that neighbor.  This is not about saying no to Christmas, but instead about saying yes to a doing Christmas differently.

Worship Fully

Here is my sermon from Sunday.  This is the first in a series on the Advent Conspiracy.

Several years ago I was at the bank on the Monday after Thanksgiving, and the two people in line in front of me where talking about their Thanksgiving holiday.  They were both talking about how much they enjoyed it, and how relaxing it was, and then one asked the other if they were ready for Christmas, and as if it was totally scripted,  the woman said no.  She said she dreaded the whole season, and just couldn’t wait to get through it and be done with the whole thing.  It reminded me of Dr. Seuss’ classic, How the Grinch Stole Christmas in which we are told that “the Grinch hated Christmas, the whole Christmas season, oh don’t ask why, no one quite knows the reason.”  I’m sure that many of us can identify not just with the woman in the bank, but also even with the Grinch sometimes, although most of us could probably articulate the reasons: busy schedules, crazy shopping, trying to live up to unrealistic expectations, finding the perfect gifts, the kids having two weeks off from school.  Our wishes, like the woman, are often not to enjoy this time of the year, but instead a desire for it all to be done and just to make it through.  Is this how Christmas is supposed to be?  Is this really what Christmas is about?  As you might imagine, I don’t think it is.  I think there is another way to do Christmas.

Today is the first Sunday of Advent.  Advent means to prepare, and so we take this time to prepare for the coming of the Christ child, and as our candle lighting liturgy said this morning, that is language that we use that Christ is coming, Christ is always coming, and yet Christ is already here as well.  It’s an already and a not quite yet.  Christ is present in the world, and yet we are preparing for Christ to come into the world, as we will say later when we gather for communion: “Christ has died; Christ is risen; Christ will come again.”  Christmas is like that as well, because Christmas is not just a day, but really a season.  One month, of 1/12 of the year, is set aside to make preparation for and then celebrating Christmas.  While within the church there are other seasons, such as the 40 days of Lent, and Easter is also 50 days, most of us don’t really think of those times, nor do we have up decorations for Easter for 50 days, although I’d be happy with 50 more days of Cadbury cream eggs.  Christmas is already here, we are inundated with it, and Christmas is not yet here as well because we are preparing the way for the coming of the Christ child, and so how do we do that?  How do we prepare for Christmas while approaching Christmas in a fundamentally different way?  That is what we are going to be talking about for the next four weeks, and it begins with worship, as we are called to worship fully.