Woman of Valor

Here is my message from Sunday. The passage was Proverbs 31:10-31:

Today we conclude our series on Proverbs having looked at anger, words, work, righteousness and money. There were several other things we could have also addressed, that we touched on some, like justice, prudence, obedience, happiness, marriage and relationships and what all these things tell us about God and faith. But we conclude with the one issue that really needs to be dealt with these days, and it was in fact the only theme that someone asked me to talk about and that is what has become known as the Proverbs 31 woman. The passage we heard this morning, at least for a portion of the church, has become one of the most used, and I would argue one of the most abused passages in scripture. Rachel Held Evans, a prophet that we lost way too soon several years ago, wrote in her wonderful book A Year of Biblical Womanhood, “In the [Fundamentalist] Christian subculture, there are three people a girl’s got to know about before she [hits puberty]: 1) Jesus. 2) Ronald Reagan, and 3) the Proverbs 31 woman… Wander into any Christian women’s conference and you will hear her name… [and] Visit a Christian bookstore, and you will find entire women’s sections devoted to books that extol her… [visit any] Christian College” and you will find guys wanting to date her and girls trying to be her.

The Proverbs 31 woman has been held up as the ideal woman. She has become the standard by which women, if they want to be biblical will be judged and the passage is sort of a checklist against women. And that’s all fine and good, if damaging, except for the fact that the portrayal here, or of seeing her as the ideal woman, has nothing to actually do with what’s being portrayed in the passage. And that’s on top of the fact that this being the model of the traditional and ideal woman doesn’t match the reality that what’s upheld as traditional as their image and role for women is very new. And so, I am going to propose an entirely different way of seeing and viewing the Proverbs 31 woman, that I believe is not only more authentic to the text, but also to the tradition of the passage. But I’m getting ahead of myself. First things first. Way back in our first message on Proverbs one of the things I said was that while proverbs are true, they are not always universally true. That is that different proverbs are true in different circumstances and so they will often contradict each other, such as we say that birds of a feather flock together but opposites attract. Both are seemingly true, even though they say the opposite thing. Similarly, proverbs can’t always be taken literally. We have to seek the truth of the message while not forcing them beyond what they are telling us, and when we try and read them as being literally true they tend to fall apart. So, we have to keep that in mind when we think about the image of this woman portrayed in Proverbs 31, that this is not a task list, a job description for the ideal woman, and to treat it as such as destructive to everyone involved, men and women.

Got Righteousness?

Here is my message from Sunday. The text was Proverbs 11:2, 4, 21; 12:10; 15:3, 25; 16:31; 17:15; 19:17; 21:13; 24:17-18; 31:8-9:

Righteous or righteousness are church words. Other than 80s surfers who would say things like the waves were righteous dude or anyone trying to describe Ferris Bueller because he is a righteous dude, and then other than talking about people who are self-righteous, that is they think more of themselves, or think themselves better than they should, we only use that term in church. But the problem with even talking about righteousness, or of being righteous in church, is the fact that it has different meanings and understandings at different times and places and in different settings. And so to really address it, as Proverbs does, we have to try and give it some definition so that we understand what it means in its usage so we can then understand what it means for us to try and apply to our lives as we too see to become righteous dudes and dudettes. After all, we are told that gray hair is a crown of glory, or as my wife calls them her wisdom highlights, and they are gained through living a righteous life.

And so I know some of you want to know how to avoid getting gray hair, and therefore want to do the opposite of what we are about to discuss, and others who are coloring your hair, just know that you are covering up the indication of your righteousness. Now, just because you have grey hair does not actually mean that you are either wise or righteous, because Proverbs also wants to say, as the immortal Buck Owens encapsulated in a song, there is no fool like and old fool. And so it turns out that how you know if people are actually living lives of wisdom, or at least seeking wisdom, was by how they lived. But, just as a reminder for those who have been here for prior weeks, or as new information if you are hearing this message on proverbs for the first time, the book of Proverbs was written in order to instruct young men of the upper social classes who are about to embark into the world and entering into marriages and leadership positions to instruct them in the wisdom they need in order to be able to do the right thing, to live a righteous life, to pursue and come to know wisdom, who is personified as a woman. And that idea of doing the right thing is really important because as I said in the first message on this, while Proverbs is about wisdom, it is not wisdom for wisdom’s sake. It is about how we live in the world and it calls for us to be living it out, to be doing it, and that plays a critical role in our understanding of righteousness.

Got Money?

Here is my message from Sunday. The text was Luke 6:17-26  and Proverbs 10:22; 11:24, 28; 13:7, 11, 22a; 19:4; 22:2, 7, 26-27; 23:4; 27:23-24; 30:8b-9:

Most of us are familiar with the Beatitudes found in Matthew from the Sermon on the Mount, which is a series of blessings, including Jesus saying, “blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs in the kingdom of heaven.” Now we can compare that against the passage we heard from Luke, in which Jesus says, “blessed are the poor, for theirs is the kingdom of God.” Luke’s version is widely considered to be most likely be the original version of this blessing dealing with financial realities, whereas Matthew has spiritualized the blessing. In Luke’s gospel this emphasis also makes sense because of his emphasis on economics and the poor. And Jesus certainly talks about money and possessions and how they affect our relationship with God and with each other. Of course, Jesus is not the only person to make this emphasis. 

Scripture is full of guidance and teachings about it, and that, of course, includes what we just heard as some of the teachings from Proverbs. And again, remembering that the purpose of Proverbs is to instruct young men of a certain economic class about what they need to know if order to be productive in their lives, these economic instructions make total sense. Proverbs tends to have a fairly positive view of money and of wealth, as long as that wealth was not gained in illicit ways, such as by lying, cheating, stealing or unjustly, to name just a few. and, just as Jesus has a lot to say about money, and we ignore that at our own peril, so too does Proverbs have a lot to say about money, and so that’s where we’re going to be spending our time today, and unlike most of the time in which the preacher begins talking about money, you don’t have to hold onto your wallets.

Got Diligence?

Here is my sermon from Sunday. The text Proverbs 6:6-11; 14:23; 21:5, 25; 24:30-34; 26:13-14: 

In 1904, Max Weber, a German economist and philosopher, began writing what became his seminal work, The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism. It is considered one of the founding works in the creation of the field of sociology. Weber argued that it was the Protestant reformation which created the spirit of capitalism and drove the northern European countries to economic prominence because Protestantism imbued the idea that everyone was called by God to be productive in life, that all had a calling, and that the ideal was no longer to be secluded in the religious life, which eschewed things like making money, and instead the ideal became working hard for the community and for yourself, with all the benefits that came from that. Weber argued that in particular this was driven by the Calvinist belief in predestination, and since under predestination you didn’t know if you were truly saved or not, the only evidence might be seen in what happened in your life, and hard work and frugality were seen as signs of election, plus if you were gaining wealth it must mean that God was blessing you, and therefore another indication that you were saved. Now it could be argued whether Weber is correct or not in his analysis, but this idea of hard work has been tied to our understanding of labor, wealth and worthiness in America. That if you are poor, it must be your fault, at least to a degree, an idea we will come back to. And yet, some of our ideas about work go back much further than Weber. It goes back to scripture, and in particular, to the views, or at least some of the views found in the book of Proverbs. And so today we are going to be looking at some of the proverbs about work and laziness, or a more general term of diligence.

Now to help us understand these proverbs in particular, it’s important to remember the purpose of Proverbs which is to provide instruction to young men of a certain social position as they are about to embark into adulthood, meaning getting married and also assuming their proper role in society as leaders. And so while the proverbs may have been known to those of lower class, or day laborers, that was not to whom proverbs was primarily addressed. Additionally, as I said in our introduction, Proverbs is an overly optimistic book, and while it is not fully this way, it does at least give off the impression that if you do the wise things, and work hard, that good things will result, including wealth and success, and if you follow the way of foolishness that the opposite will result. That is if you do x, y will happen, and thus if bad things are happening, it is not because of outside forces, it’s not because God is punishing you for something, but because of what you have chosen, or not chosen, to do. And since one of the things that the teachings and laws want to do is to make sure first that there is a next generation and second that they will be protected and cared for, the proverbs can make a little more sense within that context.

Words Like Swords

Here is my sermon from Sunday. The text was Proverbs 12:13, 18; 13:3, 14-17, 29; 15:1, 28; 18:6, 21; 19:19; 21:23; 29:22: 

It’s said that a normal preacher has one sermon that they give over and over again. A good preacher has two sermons that they over and over. And a great preacher has three sermons that they give over and over. Now I don’t know how absolutely true that is, and I like to that I’m at least a good, or maybe even great preacher, although 80% of preachers think they are above average, which makes you wonder about that other 20%, but I do find that I come back to similar themes over and over again. I don’t always know if that’s because scripture repeats these themes over and over again, or if it’s because I think we need to hear them over and over, or maybe it’s that I need to hear them over and over again. And one of the unspoken confessions of most preachers is that we preach as much to ourselves, or maybe sometimes even more to ourselves, than we do to those who are hearing this message. But today’s message is one of those themes that I keep coming back to and in this case I do think it’s because we need to hear it today maybe more than eve.

I couldn’t find a count as to exactly how many proverbs are actually contained in the book of Proverbs, nor did I take the time to count them myself, although most sources put it between 800 and 900, but there are around 150 proverbs that deal with anger and words and the mouth. Outside of the Proverbs that talk about wisdom or folly, this has to be close to the most of any theme found in Proverbs, of which we only heard a small sampling of them in this morning’s readings, but I hope it was enough to begin to give you a feel for what these proverbs sound like.

Got Wisdom?

Here is my sermon from Sunday. The text was Proverbs 1:1-9:

I don’t think I’ve ever mentioned this before to anyone here, and so this is probably going to come as a surprise, but I went to Harvard. And let me just say that jokes work a lot better when there are actually people here to laugh. But, there are a lot of really smart people at Harvard, or as they say in Boston, they are wicked smaht, but just because they’re smart doesn’t mean they don’t do stupid things. They could be geniuses and also be as dumb as a pile of bricks, or we might say they don’t have any common sense. I’m sure that most people have had that experience, maybe especially in this community. There are people who have intelligence, and maybe even have lots of knowledge, but they don’t have, in the words of Proverbs, wisdom. And here’s the difference. Knowledge is knowing that a tomato is fruit. Wisdom is knowing not to put a tomato into a fruit salad. Today we begin a new series that’s going to try and teach us some of that collected wisdom that seeks to help us not only to know and practice wisdom, but by doing so to live lives of righteousness and live in God’s will for our lives and the world, and we will do so by looking at the book of Proverbs.

Proverbs is found in the Hebrew Scriptures, or the Old Testament, is a collection not just of sayings that we normally think of as proverbs, but also other forms of teaching and admonitions. The book is part of a larger collection of texts that are known as wisdom literature. Wisdom literature as a genre is an “umbrella term” as one scholar wrote, “that encompasses humanity’s quest to understand and organize reality, to find answers to basic existential questions, and to pass that information along from one generation to another.” It seeks to provide both instruction for how we are to live our lives, but also exploration or explanation about the way the world works, especially around the problem of suffering. The books of the wisdom literature include the book of Proverbs, Job, Ecclesiastes, which is also sometimes known as Quoheleth, as the name Ecclesiastes comes from the Latin name of the book, and then Song of Songs, also known as the Song of Solomon, a series of love poems that the rabbis said no one should be allowed to read until they were adults, with the age of 35 sometimes thrown around.

Do You Love Me?

Here is my message from Sunday. The text was John 21:15-19:

New beginnings can be good things. New starts allow us to reset, to initiate a new outlook and perspective on things. To put the past behind us and maybe even pretend, or even act, as if the past didn’t exist. It didn’t happen. The playoffs for the NFL will be starting soon, and lots of teams know now they don’t stand a chance of winning it all, but just a few months ago, they all had the pretensions that they could be the last team standing. Whether that was actually true or not could be debated, but at was at least the idea. The New Year can do the same thing for us. Regardless of what we did or didn’t do in the last year we get a start to do something different. We can start to exercise, or change diet, or save more, or prepare to take that trip we always wanted, or start reading more, or relaxing more, or whatever it might be. I have to say that last year my resolution was to gain thirty pounds, and unfortunately I didn’t make that total, but I haven’t given up yet. But there is something very strong in Christianity about starting over again, of putting things in the rearview mirror and moving forward, and we do that not only in worship but in our faith itself, at least hopefully.

And so today we begin a new series, a short series, entitled Peter, Paul and Mary Magdalene, and for those who are younger there was a folk group from the 60’s called Peter, Paul and Mary, which you may know for either Puff the Magic Dragon or If I had a Hammer, if you know them at all. And not to date myself too much, while I didn’t see them in the 60’s or 70’s, I did see them in the 80s. But, the important part here is that that’s not whom we are talking about. And as I was thinking about this series last spring, I didn’t really think about Peter, Paul and Mary Magdalene as being about new beginnings, but in many, many ways they are. And so we’re not going to really talk about who they are or what they did and for why they are famous, except for Mary Magdalene, but instead to look at a very particular episode, how they encountered God in that moment, what it meant for them, and more importantly what it means for us in our faith in the possibility of new beginnings and of God’s amazing grace.

What I Read in 2021

Here is a list of the books I read in 2021. This is more for my records, but I would recommend most, but not all, of them.

1. 109 East Palace by Jennet Conant
2. 1356 by Bernard Cornwell
3. A Sense of Honor by James Webb
4. A Time for Mercy by John Grisham
5. After the Prophet: The Epic Story of the Shia-Sunni Split in Islam by Lesley Hazleton
6. American Street by Ibi Zoboi
7. Black Buck: A Novel by Mateo Askaripour
8. Black Klansman by Ron Stallworth
9. Blue Like Jazz by Donald Miller
10. Book of Ages: The Life and Opinions of Jane Franklin by Jill Lepore
11. Born a Crime: Stories from a South African Childhood by Trevor Noah
12. Bound for Gold by William Martin
13. Brave New Home: Our Future in Smarter, Simpler, Happier Housing by Diana Lind
14. Caste: The Origin of Our Discontent by Isabel Wilkerson
15. Celebration of Discipline by Richard Foster
16. Cloak of Deception by James Luceno
17. Dare to Dream: Creating a God-Sized Mission Statement for Your Life by Mike Slaughter
18. Dear Ijeawele, or a Feminist Manifesto in Fifteen Suggestions by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie
19. Do Not Live Afraid: Faith in a Fearful World by John Indermark
20. Early Morning Riser by Katherine Heiny
21. Eaters of the Dead by Michael Crichton
22. Eight Life-Enriching Practices of United Methodists by Hal Knight
23. Escalante's Dream: On the Trail of the Spanish Discovery of the Southwest by David Roberts
24. Exploring the Seven Elements of the Lord's Prayer: A Thought-Provoking Journey Into the Practical and Biblical Principles of the Prayer Given to Us by Christ Jesus by Erik Douglas Randolph
25. Frontier Grit: The Unlikely True Stories of Daring Pioneer Women by Marianne Monson
26. Futureproof: 9 Rules for Humans in the Age of Automation by Kevin Roose
27. God the What? What Our Metaphors for God Reveal about Our Beliefs in God by Carolyn Jane Bohler
28. Great Circle by Maggie Shipstead
29. Hail Mary by Andy Weir
30. Heretic by Bernard Cornwell
31. Hidden Valley Road: Inside the Mind of an American Family by Robert Kolker
32. Hiroshima by John Hersey
33. His Truth is Marching On: John Lewis and the Power of Hope by Jon Meachem
34. I Alone Can Fix It: Donald Trump's Catastrophic Final Year by Carole Leonnig and Phillip Rucker
35. In the Hurricane's Eye: The Genius of George Washington and the Victory at Yorktown by Nathaniel Philbrick
36. Indians on Vacation by Thomas King
37. Insignificant Events in the Life of a Cactus by Dusti Bowling
38. Interior Chinatown by Charles Yu
39. Lies We Believe About God by Wm. Paul Young
40. Life in a Medieval Castle by Brenda Ralph Lewis
41. Life in a Medieval Village by Frances and Joseph Gies
42. Living a Life that Matters by Harold S. Kushner
43. Living the Lord's Prayer by Rowan Williams and Wendy Beckett
44. Lord, Teach Us: The Lord's Prayer and the Christian Life by William Willimon and Stanley Hauerwas
45. Lords of the North by Bernard Cornwell
46. Lupe Wong Won't Dance by Donna Barba Higuera
47. Maniac: The Bath School Disaster and the Birth of the Modern Mass Killer by Harold Schechter
48. Mary Magdalene: A Biography by Bruce Chilton
49. Matrix by Lauren Groll
50. Me and White Supremacy: Combat Racism, Change the World, and Become a Good Ancestor by Layla F. Saad
51. Mingling with the Enemy: A Social Survival Guide for Our Divided Era by Jeanne Martinet
52. Minimalism for Families by Zoe Kim
53. Momentous Events in the Life of a Cactus by Dusti Bowling
54. Mornings on Horseback: The Story of an Extraordinary Family, a Vanished Way of Life, and the Unique Child Who Became Theodore Roosevelt by David McCullough
55. Move: What 1,000 Churches Reveal about Spiritual Growth by Greg L. Hawkins
56. Notes on Grief by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie
57. Of Logs and Stone: The Buildings of the Los Alamos Ranch School and Bathtub Row by Craig Martin
58. Olympic Pride, American Prejudice: The Untold Story of 18 African Americans Who Defied Jim Crow and Adolf Hitler to Compete in the 1936 Berlin Olympics by Deborah Riley Draper, Blair Underwood and Travis Thrasher
59. On Juneteenth by Annette Gordon-Reed
60. On Pandemics: Deadly Diseases from Bubonic Plague to Coronavirus by David Waltner-Toews
61. Outlawed by Anna North
62. Overcoming Bias: Building Authentic Relationships Across Differences by Tiffany Jana and Matthew Freeman
63. Pegasus Bridge: June 6, 1944 by Stephen E. Ambrose
64. Peter, Paul and Mary Magdalene: The Followes of Jesus in Legend and History by Bart Ehrman
65. Practicing Resurrection: The Gospel of Mark and Radical Discipleship by Janet Wolf
66. Project Hail Mary by Andy Weir
67. Questions God Asks Us by Trevor Hudson
68. Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind by Yuval Noah Harari
69. Searching for Sunday: Leaving, Loving and Finding the Church by Rachel Held-Evans
70. Shadows of the Empire by Steve Perry
71. She Came to Slay: The Life and Times of Harriet Tubman by Erica Armstrong Dunbar
72. Shutter Island by Dennis Lehane
73. Simple Governance: Liberating Your Church for Mission by Stephan Ross
74. Something Must Be Done About Prince Edward County: A Family, a Virginia Town, a Civil Rights Battle by Kristen Green
75. Sooley by John Grisham
76. Soul Feast: An Invitation to the Christian Spiritual Life by Marjorie J. Thompson
77. Stamped: Racism, Antiracism, and You by Jason Reynolds and Ibram X. Kendi
78. Stride: Creating a Discipleship Pathway for Your Church by Mike Schreiner and Ken Willard
79. Strong Towns: A Bottom-Up Revolution to Rebuild American Prosperity by Charles L. Marohn Jr.
80. Subliminal: How Your Unconscious Mind Rules Your Behavior by Leonard Mlodinow
81. T. Rex and the Crater of Doom by Walter Alvarez
82. Talking to Strangers by Malcolm Gladwell
83. That Left Turn at Albuquerque by Scott Phillips
84. The Amazon Way: 14 Leadership Principles Behind the World's Most Disruptive Company by John Rossman
85. The American Spirit: Who We Are and What We Stand For by David McCullough
86. The Archer's Tale by Bernard Cornwel
87. The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes by Suzanne Collins
88. The Battle for Civil Rights, Or, How Los Alamos Became a County by Marjorie Bell Chambers
89. The Bomber Mafia by Macolm Gladwell
90. The Burning Blue: The Untold Story of Christa McAuliffe and NASA's Challenger Disaster by Kevin Cook
91. The Death and Life of Great American Cities by Jane Jacobs
92. The Eagles of Heart Mountain: The True Story of Football, Incarceration and Resistence in World War II America by Bradford Pearson
93. The End of Youth Ministry?: Why Parents Don't Really Care about Youth Groups and What Youth Workers Should Do about It by Andrew Root
94. The Endurance: Shackleton's Legendary Antarctic Expedition by Caroline Alexander
95. The Five Dysfunctions of a Team by Patrick Lencioni
96. The Greatest Prayer by John Dominic Crossan
97. The Idolatry of God: Breaking Our Addiction to Certainty and Satisfaction by Peter Rollins
98. The Immoral Majority: Why Evangelicals Chose Political Power Over Christian Values by Ben Howe
99. The Jewish Background to the Lord's Prayer by Brad Young
100. The Kindness Challenge: Thirty Days to Improve Any Relationship by Shaunti Feldhahn
101. The Last Kingdom by Bernard Cornwell
102. The Little Book of Hygge: The Danish Way to Live Well by Meik Wiking
103. The Lord and His Prayer by NT Wright
104. The Lord's Prayer by C. Clifton Black
105. The Lord's Prayer by Mary Lou Redding
106. The Lord's Prayer: Jesus Teaches Us How to Pray by Mary Lou Redding
107. The Man from the Train: The Solving of a Century-Old Serial Killer Mystery by Bill James and Rachel McCarthy James
108. The Morning and the Evening by Ken Follett
109. The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness by Michelle Alexander
110. The Night Lake: A Young Priest Maps the Topography of Grief by Liz Tichenor
111. The Pale Horseman by Bernard Cornwell
112. The Passion Paradox: A Guide to Going All In, Finding Success, and Discovering the Benefits of an Unbalanced Life by Brad Stulberg and Steve Magness
113. The Physics of Star Wars by Patrick Johnson
114. The Pioneers: The Heroic Story of the Settlers Who Brought the American Ideal West by David McCullough
115. The Prayer That Turns the World Upside Down: The Lord's Prayer as a Manifesto for Revolution by R. Albert Mohler Jr.
116. The Return of Marco Polo's World: War, Strategy, and American Interests in the Twenty-first Century by Robert D. Kaplan
117. The Second: Race and Guns in a Fatally Unequal America by Carol Anderson
118. The Sinking of the Bismark by William L. Shirer
119. The Sixth Extinction: An Unnatural History by Elizabeth Kolbert
120. The Templars: The Rise and Spectacular Fall of God's Holy Warriors by Dan Jones
121. The Truth about Lies: The Illusion of Honesty and the Evolution of Deceit by Aja Raden
122. The Upswing: How America Came Together a Century Ago and How We Can Do It Again by Robert D. Putnam
123. Thrawn Ascendency: Greater Good by Timothy Zahn
124. Traitor: A History of American Betrayal from Benedict Arnold to Donald Trump by David Rothkopf
125. Transcendent Kingdom by Yaa Gyasi
126. Triumph: The Untold Story of Jesse Owens and Hitler's Olympics by Jeremy Schaap
127. Vagabond by Bernard Cornwell
128. Valley of the Guns: The Pleasant Valley War and the Trauma of Violence by Eduardo Obreg Pagan
129. We are Not Like Them by Christine Pride and Jo Piazza
130. What Do We Do with the Bible by Richard Rohr
131. What Would You Do If You Weren't Afraid?: Discover a Life Filled with Purpose and Joy Through the Secrets of Jewish Wisdom by Michal Oshman
132. White Evangelical Racism by Anthea Butler
133. Working Class Rage by Tex Sample
134. Year Book by Seth Rogen
135. You Are Not American: Citizenship Stripping from Dred Scott to the Dreamers by Amanda Frost
136. You'll Never Believe What Happened to Lacy: Crazy Stories About Racism by Amber Ruffin and Lacey Lamar

Temple Tossed

Here is my message from Sunday. The text was Luke 2:41-52:

I remember one Christmas morning when I was young, although I don’t remember how old I was. We had just finished unwrapping our presents, but were still sitting at the base of our Christmas tree surrounded by the gifts and detritus that Christmas morning usually brings for small children, I turned to my mother and asked when Easter was.  My mother is here today and she can verify this.  The reason this question was important was because I knew the best part of Christmas was over. Having turkey was never my idea of a good time, and the next time when we would receive presents and candy was at Easter, and so I wanted to know how long I was going to have to wait.  Today’s scripture reading seems to be moving in that same direction that I was all those many years ago.  Today many people will take down their Christmas trees, guests will begin to go home, and Christmas music can no longer be heard on the radio. For many Christmas is still in the air and I’m sure that many of us will be going home for more Christmas leftovers.  After all, it was yesterday, and technically it’s only the second day of Christmas, but yet here we find ourselves reading and talking about a story not of Jesus as an infant, but instead as a young boy of 12.  Kids sure do grow up fast these days.

Now this might seem like a strange passage to read on the first Sunday after Christmas, and it is, although it is the assigned reading for today, but it’s also just a strange passage in general especially for Luke. That’s true first because this story makes no sense in relation to Luke’s birth narrative which precedes it.  After all, it is in Luke’s narrative that Mary is visited by an angel and told that the child she will carry is special, and Mary responds by giving us the magnificat, her beautiful poetic response.  It is in Luke’s gospel that John the Baptist, who has his own miraculous conception story, is a cousin of Jesus who leaps in his mother’s womb when his mother Elizabeth and Mary meet.  It is in Luke’s narrative that the shepherds are sent to Bethlehem by an angel and come to pay homage to the child in a manger, and we are told “Mary treasured all these things in her heart.”  And it is in Luke’s narrative that when Joseph and Mary present Jesus at the Temple shortly after his birth and make an offering for their first born son that Anna and Simeon both make claims about who Jesus is and what he means to Israel.  And yet if we just read today’s passage none of this seems to have taken place, or if it did then Mary and Joseph have totally forgotten about them after only twelve years, which seems very unlikely.  Mary even refers to Joseph as Jesus’ father. This story just simply doesn’t match up with what has come before it. 

Abiding in the Fields

Here is my message for Christmas Eve. The scripture was Luke 2:1-20: 

They say that familiarity breed contempt. But what familiarity also breeds is comfortableness, as people are attracted to things that are familiar, and when things are familiar to us, and comfortable for us, we also tend to think we know them really well, so much so that we might stop paying attention to the details in the story. I think the same is true for the Christmas story. Most of us have probably heard that passage from Luke about the birth of Jesus for what seems like hundreds of times. I mean even if we only heard it every year in the Charlie Brown Christmas Special, as it’s what Linus quotes from when he wants everyone to know the meaning of Christmas, we could have heard it at least 56 times since it’s debut in 1965. And when we stop paying attention because we know it, we can overlook things or even add things to it because it just has to be there, because we know it’s there. So, for example, we talk about Mary riding into Bethlehem on a donkey, but there are no donkey’s in the story, and definitely not Dominic the donkey. We have other barnyard animals in our nativity set. No mention of them in the story. We have three wise men arriving, and some of you may remember their names as Melchior, Gaspar and Balthazar, but not only are they not named, but we don’t even know how many there were. We say three because there were three gifts, but let’s be honest that men are not always the best at getting social etiquette correct, and so it’s entirely possible that some of them went in together on gifts, or maybe even had the temerity to show up without a gift at all. And then there are the parts of the story we just want to skip over all together.