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Sunday, December 07, 2008
The Light Still Shines in the Darkness
Second Sunday in Advent
By Rev. Dr. Harvey C. Martz
Scripture: John 1: 1 - 5
1 In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. 2 He was in the beginning with God. 3 All things came into being through him, and without him not one thing came into being. What has come into being 4 in him was life, and the life was the light of all people. 5 The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness did not overcome it.
We have just another two and a half weeks to go to Christmas and some of the same controversies are with us again: one large, para church group wants people to boycott any retailer that wishes people happy holidays instead of Merry Christmas. And another group is extremely upset with a set of new billboards that has appeared in the past few weeks in Denver and Colorado Springs. The originator of the billboards has received hate mail from Christians-that seems contradictory but it does happen and has happened to me and others when we have taken stances that are unpopular. Even worse, the billboard sponsor has received death threats from people calling themselves Christian.
The billboards have eight simple words that some people find threatening but are right in sync with the American right of free speech and freedom of religion: “Don’t believe in God? You are not alone.”
The controversy reminds me of what New Testament Scholar Tom Wright, a theological conservative used to tell about his conversation with many first year students at the college in England where he was chaplain for a while. He would interview many of the students as they came for freshman year. In the interview many students would be uncomfortable talking with the school chaplain and would be embarrassed to tell Dr. Wright that he would probably not see much of them in chapel because they did not believe in God any more.
Tom Wright was not bothered to hear that at all, and he made a consistent response to the students. Do you remember what he would say? He said, well, that’s interesting-tell me about the God you don’t believe in because it is probably the same caricature of God that I don’t believe in also!
Some people think of God as an old bearded man in the sky who sends tragedies to everyone and who controls the earthquakes and tornadoes and floods, who judges and condemns people all the time and who took just six days to create the universe, who only welcomes and offers grace to some people and not to others.
Many of us have trouble with that limited image of God and see God as Jesus did-a gracious spirit whose grace extends to all people and whose family is larger than some people want, a God who takes us out of our comfort zone and who asks us to be as compassionate and justice minded as God is! That is the God Jesus lived and died to show us, and when we meet that God, we still find controversy and discomfort.
I hope you have some “used to thinks” about God. And when I hear people tell me they don’t really believe in God, I feel like Professor Wright who says that there are some images of God that we need to outgrow. We find that growth and changing theology throughout the Bible. The story of Jonah is not so much about a big fish that swallows Jonah, it is about a reluctant prophet who resents that God can be merciful to some people, the Assyrian people, enemies of the Israelites, people Jonah did not think God should be merciful to. And when God accepts the repentance of the Assyrians after Jonah has asked them to repent, what does Jonah do? He gets very angry and goes to sit outside the city of Nineveh to sulk! It is a parable of a tension throughout the whole Bible of whether God is welcoming and gracious to all people or just to a small group of really holy people like us!!
The Christmas story can cause us to rethink some of our pictures of God. The recent book by Marcus Borg and Dom Crossan on the first Christmas shows us some of the richness and some of the diversity in the Bible. What is important to believe about the Christmas story? First, how important is the story of Jesus birth and its details in Christian history? Do you know what the most important celebrations were in the first few hundred years of the Jesus movement? The most important was Easter! We would not exist as a movement unless those early followers had not experienced and continue to experience the ongoing presence of a risen messiah whom death could not overcome.
Easter was the most important, followed probably by Pentecost, the birthday of the Jesus movement and the beginning of efforts by Peter and Paul to spread the good news of a gracious and welcoming God to all people!
The birth of Jesus came to be a later celebration, and the birth stories are rich, diverse, and they differ from each other. When was Jesus born? We do not know the date. One gospel says that there were shepherds out in the fields near Bethlehem watching their flocks. That means that the weather was mild and it was probably not winter because despite the very hot summers in Israel, winter can be cold and can even bring snow.
One gospel says that the messiah will be a descendant of King David through the lineage of his father. Two other gospels give us the tradition of parthenogenesis-or birth without a human father, a belief that was to prove divinity. Jesus was not the only person in antiquity whose followers claimed a virgin birth. Do you know who the others were? They were the Roman emperors, the Caesars. One gospel tells us Jesus was placed in a manger, a feeding trough after his birth-and it would not have looked like the wooden ones we think of because wood was rare, it would have been made of stone! Matthew’s gospel tells us that when the magi, the wise men or astrologers came to bring their gifts, they visited the holy family in a house and not in a barn or stable.
That would actually have been more likely since animals were kept in a portion of the houses.
Here is what I love about the Christmas story we rehearse each year: Jesus was born in humble beginnings. King Herod, who was ruler at the time and whose tomb outside Jerusalem has just been discovered in the past few months (National Geographic features that this month in its cover story), Herod was threatened by that birth as he should have been because what Jesus stands for is revolutionary and takes all of us out of our comfort zones and out of any smug complacency we have settled into.
Jesus grew in a working class family, he had a unique sense of call and mission from God, he was baptized and had a wilderness experience that gave him specific direction, he was a healer, teacher, and preacher who expanded people’s images of a gracious and welcoming God, he made some people uncomfortable and brought comfort to others who had been rejected. He himself was despised and rejected as he took on the role from the Prophet Isaiah of a suffering servant messiah. And God affirmed him by raising him from death-not in a resuscitated corpse but as a living spirit, the Risen One that influences the world profoundly today through us and others.
Christmas reminds us of our need to receive all this and to give and share with others in that spirit of a living Christ!! This congregation does that every year. You brought coats for a coat drive a couple of weeks ago, you helped replenish some empty food banks, you gave turkeys for thanksgiving, you are helping needy families this month, you are willing to be messengers of life and light to others.
Those deeds of service and giving are more important to me than whether certain retail establishments wish customers Merry Christmas or happy holidays. Who was it who said they would rather see a sermon than hear one any day?? We will look at some themes from the prophet Isaiah next Sunday, themes we hear during advent and Christmas that tell us about the light that shines in the darkness and about how the work of Christ and of Christmas still needs to be done-to liberate the captives, to bring good news to the poor, sight to the blind.
The light of Christ still shines in the darkness and even in our dark times of recession and lay offs and economic distress and uncertainty, that light of Christ still shines in the darkness and the darkness cannot overcome it. May we leave our worship and communion service today as messengers and bearers of that light and hope to all who are in need!