Sermons from Eastminster United Presbyterian Church in Toledo, Ohio

Passing through the waters (Isaiah 43.1-7)

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Passing through the waters (Isaiah 43.1-7; Luke 3.15-17, 21-22)
Eastminster United Presbyterian Church, Baptism of the Lord C (January 13, 2019)
Tom James
I cross two bridges to get here—one of them pretty small—low and level—and the other quite large and very high. The small one takes me from the island where I live over part of the Detroit River to the mainland, and the other crosses the Maumee River on Interstate 280. I hardly notice crossing the small one. It makes some people nervous (each lane is narrow), but I actually enjoy driving on it. There are nice views of the river, which is always changing. The second one, the big suspension bridge on 280, such a massive project that, when it was built, a number of workers lost their lives, has taken some getting used to. It’s not the water below that bothers me—it’s how far below it is. I’m not a big fan of heights. But still, with both bridges, I’m mindful that there is cold flowing water beneath me, and I know that it wouldn’t be much fun to plunge into it. Crossing bridges can help you sustain a pretty healthy respect for nature and its powers.
The ancient Hebrews were not a sea-faring people and had a lot of rather negative feelings about seas and even lakes. We see this in many places in the Bible, where seas are seen as a deep and dangerous threat to human existence. The flood story is an obvious example. But what may not be obvious to us is that the flood story was not just an isolated weather catastrophe, but is instead a sort of sequel to a much older tale. The flood story itself hearkens back to the opening verses of the book of Genesis. When God created the earth, just about the first thing that God needed to do in order to create a habitat for human beings was to separate the dry land from the waters. Now, the waters weren’t just understood to be on the same approximate horizontal plane with us. They were seen to be beside us, if you will, but also below us and even above us. Genesis gives us a very much land-loving picture of a fragile stretch of human habitation, threatened on all sides by raging waves that are pictured as a frightening and hostile force of chaos. That’s what had to be tamed in order for there to be a creation at all.
Some of us have seen the power of waves up close, but, even if we haven’t, we have seen pictures or footage or heard stories about what they can do. Just this past week a lighthouse on the Wisconsin side of Lake Michigan was completely wiped out by a huge wave and high winds. Did you see the footage? One moment it was standing tall, and the next minute it was just gone. In the flood, God’s creative act of separating the dry land from the threatening waters is reversed. You could say that a force of de-creation—a force of destruction that had lurked in the vicinity of humankind since the very beginning—was unleashed.
It’s interesting, though, that the very identity of these land-loving people, Israel, was made as they passed through threatening waters. When Israel was enslaved, when they were forced to serve an imperial master and had no safe place of worship and no land to call their own—God heard their cries and delivered them from Pharaoh. How did God deliver them, though? By opening the sea for them—by creating a stretch of dry land for them—by separating human life from the chaos and disorder that threatens it from all sides once again, and telling them to march bravely forward. There seems to be a pattern here. Apparently, this is what God does. Apparently, this is who God is.
This Sunday is designated “Baptism of the Lord” on our church calendar. Still very near the beginning of the church year, we celebrate a series of beginnings for Jesus: his birth, his epiphany or manifestation to the nations as they were represented the wise men, his (perhaps, first) trip to Jerusalem as a twelve-year-old, and, now, his baptism. Jesus undergoes baptism at the beginning of his ministry as it is recorded in the gospels. He passes through the waters, making the same journey, symbolically speaking, that the Israelites made when they passed through the raging chaos of the sea as they escaped Egypt. The next three years are prefigured in this ritual because his journeys through Galilee and then back to Jerusalem will take him through dangerous territory. He will confront chaos in the form of demon possessed people, and people with devastating illnesses, and, for himself, chaos in the form of suspicion and persecution, and trial before Pilate, and death.
Who knew baptism meant so much! We often if it as a sort of blessing we bestow on people—most often children. Baptisms are times for joy. And innocence. And, yet, for Jesus and also for us, his disciples, baptism points to a life of passing through the waters, facing threats on all sides, making our way on a narrow strip of dry land with crashing waves barely held back by the hand of grace. Baptism, in other words, points to real life, with all its uncertainties and dangers.
In our Old Testament reading for this morning, the prophet Isaiah probably has in mind the story of the people of Israel making their way across dry ground, passing through the sea, as they escaped from Egypt as he writes that his readers will pass through the waters unharmed. He is writing to Jews in exile to give them hope that God has not forgotten them and that the chaos that seems to envelop their lives will not destroy them. Commentator Paul Hanson notes that there is another reference these verses, too. Making people pass through water was also an ancient way of putting people on trial to prove their innocence or guilt. Passing through the water was not only dangerous–it was a way of being exposed, proven guilty if they failed the test. And, of course, they failed the test by drowning—so, with the judgment came the penalty as well.
Much later, when Jesus teaches his disciples to pray, I wonder if it wasn’t something like that that he has in mind when he prays, “save us from the time of trial.” When we repeat the prayer now, we use the words “deliver us from evil,” but the literal translation from the gospel asks God to deliver us through a time of trial—perhaps, keep us from being drowned. The evil that we dread is not just any old thing, but a very specific evil—the evil of being put to the test and failing. And, so, “save us from the time of trial” doesn’t mean keep us from ever having to face adversities, or keep us from having to confront and struggle with the chaos that continues to this day to threaten our lives. Rather, it means, helps us to endure the chaos. It means, give us the strength not to buckle or break under the pressure. Show us the strip of dry land where the water can’t isn’t too deep to cross. Enable us to keep standing, even in the face of a huge wave.
The implicit message is, only God can do that. Ordinarily, things topple and disappear, like the lighthouse amid the fury of Lake Michigan waves and wind. Ordinarily, enslaved people don’t get liberated by simply marching away—and certainly not be marching through a sea. Ordinarily, people in exile at the hands of an expanding empire don’t get to go back, rebuild, and create a great world religion. Ordinarily, a man who gets executed as a criminal doesn’t leave a tomb empty. Ordinarily, the barely literate followers of such a person don’t build a movement that outlasts an empire and changes the world. Our history as the people of God, from ancient Israel to contemporary east Toledo, is a story of defying what is ordinary. Ordinarily, there is no liberation but only fresh cycles of bondage, no resurrection but only a slow or fast decline toward death. But, “ordinarily” is not the end of the matter, because God is the creator, and, as long as God remains the creator, creation, and re-creation, continues to happen, and the forces of chaos cannot prevail.
The verses that we read from Isaiah have what some scholars call an “envelope” structure. A theme unites the beginning and the end—the theme of God as creator is repeated in both places, and a theme also unites the section right after the beginning and the section right before the end—God redeems in history. The structure is like an envelope or like a shell in that it holds something very important in its middle, and that is the message that explains everything. Israel had been through a lot with God. It had had moments of ecstatic joy, long stretches of blinding forgetfulness, and times filled with a heavy sense of judgment. But the heart of Israel’s experience is suggested in verse four. God says, “You are precious in my sight and honored, and I love you.”
Ultimately, that’s the message that carries us through the waters—whether they be waters of chaos and threat or waters of trial. We are precious in God’s sight. We are honored. And God loves us. The heart of the gospel is the heart of our story.
On Baptism of the Lord Sunday, it is customary to remember our baptism. For many of us, there is no way to actually remember the experience of being baptized. So what we remember is that we have indeed passed through the waters many times—that God has led us through and will lead us through. We remember our baptism by trusting that we pass through because God has said that we, despite our flaws, despite our lack of faith, despite any of the hindrances which lay before us or behind us, are precious and honored, and loved. We pass through, we are able to stand, because God has reached out to us in our weakness, and that makes all the difference. In the name of God, our creator and redeemer, the who honors us, and loves us. Amen.

This Sunday, January 13

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Did you hear about the lighthouse in Wisconsin that was washed away by a huge wave from Lake Michigan this past week? It was another reminder of the awesome power of nature. The Hebrew people were generally not lovers of the sea: many of their images of chaos and even evil were images of ocean depths and turbulent waves (and sea monsters!). It is interesting, then, that their most important story of redemption (the Exodus from Egypt) involved passing through the sea. This Sunday is “Baptism of the Lord” Sunday when we recall the baptism of Jesus at the beginning of his ministry. We will be talking about the significance of “passing through the waters” (as we read in Isaiah 43) for Christian life. How does our faith teach us to deal with threatening dangers? How can it equip us to endure trials and difficulties? If we follow the biblical stories, from Moses to Jesus, it seems as if faith were made for dangers and trials! I hope you will join us on Sunday and learn more about “Passing through the waters.”

The old light and the new (Matthew 2.1-12)

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The new light and the old (Matthew 2.1-12)
Eastminster/United Presbyterian Church, Epiphany (January 6, 2019)
Tom James
“They shall come from east and west, and north and south, to sit together at the table in the kingdom of God!” What a terrifying thought! Have you ever stopped to think of all the problems that would cause? Think of the logistical nightmare, for starters. Where would they all sit? How would we find something everyone would like to eat? What if the offering is too bland for some, or too spicy for others? Think of all the food allergies to somehow try and avoid. And what kind of table manners could we reasonably expect from those from the east, or from the west? Let’s not even talk about those from the south! The point is, how will we manage not to offend one another, gathered together from all over like that?
Getting lots of people together for big events, as great as it can be, can also raise anxiety levels. There’s always an element of the unknown, always the possibility that conversation will take that unexpected turn that exposes frictions that have been safely swept under the carpet for years, or that creates new ones altogether. Even getting family together for the holidays is like that, as we all know. It may feel cozy and comfortable around the fire—until the new boyfriend shows up, or the new spouse, who knows nothing of the facts necessary for survival in any family: who’s mad at whom, or who you don’t mention religion to, or who to avoid when the eggnog gets passed around. There are all kinds of things to avoid or to worry about, and even the most careful management cannot completely stamp them out.
Now, all of this may help us understand a little of the anxiety of King Herod. Herod was not only the appointed king of Israel; he was a skilled manager, able somehow to keep the people of occupied Israel together, while at the same time pleasing the occupying powers, while at the same time orchestrating the construction of an extravagant new version of the Jewish temple which made him hugely popular with his own people and famous throughout the world. Herod liked to be in control of the party, and he was really good at it.
And then these three strange men hopped down from there camels and innocently knocked on the palace doors. Our tradition calls them the “three wise men,” and they are sometimes pictured as three kings from the east. Likely, they were a group of astrologers from a region which we now know as Iran. They were foreigners, from a land which had once ruled the Jews. They were practitioners of a craft forbidden by Jewish law. And yet, they were very useful, and their art was hardly ever scoffed at as it is today. Like their modern counterparts, these astrologers were expert in squeezing secret information out of the locations of stars. Our Scriptures hint to us that it was through their learned predictions that they came to realize that something was up in Palestine—something that they definitely ought to check out.
But these “wise men” were just as ignorant as a new boyfriend, it seems, about the facts essential to survival in Herod’s family. They didn’t know that Herod was the uncle you need to avoid at the family Christmas get-together. They had no idea how easy it would be to fall into a conversational trap that might tend to ruin the party. “We have read in the stars about the birth of a king, and we have come to pay reverence to him.” Herod’s eyebrows lifted. “A king, huh? That’s interesting.” The innocent and naïve astrologers may not have caught it, but we can almost feel the blood begin to boil in King Herod’s royal veins. Our passage tells us that he was “afraid, and all Jerusalem with him.” Now, the reason all Jerusalem was afraid when Herod was upset was that Herod was the type whose emotions tended to get away with him, and one of the strongest emotions he felt was jealousy for his own power. He was insanely jealous, in fact, not only for his claim to rule but for the old order he had re-established: the monarchy, the temple he had rebuilt, the system of sacrifices and taxation and vassalhood to the Roman ruling power, the machinery that Herod kept running so well.
Historians of the period assure us that this Scriptural image of Herod as insane is more than melodrama. Herod was mentally unbalanced, and dangerous. But he was revered by the people because of his ability to keep some semblance of order and even progress in a period of great turmoil, and, more importantly, for his effectiveness in keeping the old light of Jewish nationhood lit even when there seemed to be so little fuel. Herod was more than a vassal king: he was a bearer of the old light in an age of darkness, and he guarded its flame with a vigilance that bordered on the pathological.
We, too, tend to be people who guard the old light in our lives. It’s human nature to defend and protect our past accomplishments. Each of us, no matter where we are from or who we are related to or how much we have, has a little Herod in themselves. Each of us is threatened by strange knocks on our doors at unexpected times, or by calls to acknowledge a new light shining from beyond the walls of our own Jerusalem. And all of us want the family Christmas dinner to go off smoothly—no uncomfortable questions, no digging around in forbidden conversational territory, no new revelations, or epiphanies.
The Sunday on or before January 6th each year we designate at “Epiphany Sunday.” It is the day on which we read the story of these three “wise men” from the East coming to visit the baby Jesus. It is called “epiphany” because the visit of these three astrologers was the beginning of the “epiphany” or “manifestation” of the glory of Jesus to the nations. These three foreigners caught a glimpse of the Jewish Messiah—they crashed the family party and saw the host in a way that no one else was quite able to see him.  It was their very lack of familiarity with the life of this family that enabled them to see Jesus in a new and unique way, a way which threatened Herod and guardians of the old light in a way they could not have anticipated.
On Epiphany, we celebrate these new perspectives brought by foreigners and other kinds of outsiders when they peer into the stable, or when they knock on our doors, innocently asking for admittance to our family party. We are, of course, free to be like Herod, raising our eyebrows, cherishing bitterness in our souls, scheming to undermine their perspectives and protect our own. But, in faith, we honor the new light on our savior that these strangers shed because in faith we know that God has sent them for that very purpose. Initially, their strange appearance and their (to our minds) odd way of thinking may turn us off, or even frighten us. But we know that God is bringing light from the east, and the west, and the north, and the south, to our table all the time. God is providing other people, people different from ourselves, to teach us who we are, what gifts we can share, ways in which we can grow.
One definition of insanity, I’m told, is keeping on doing the same things we’ve always done and expecting different results.  The truth is, for personal well-being as human beings and for success as a church, we all need new light, fresh perspectives on ourselves and on the God has come to be among us.
This new year is an opportunity to embrace the new light streaming our way rather than turning from it. Let us take hold of it: welcoming new perspectives on ourselves rather than fearing them, consciously and deliberately dropping our defensiveness when outsiders ask questions or probe for reasons why we think or act as we do. Let us do more than “tolerate” differences this year: let us go so far as to open ourselves to the ways God is growing us, making us richer and better equipped for life, through the insights and experiences of other people.
Maybe a new boyfriend or a new girlfriend, or a new spouse or a new child, will show up at your home sometime this year. Maybe we will have astrologers or other “seekers” showing up at our church doors this year, looking for the light of God. What will do?

Epiphany is a call to acknowledge what God is doing among us, and among people who are different from us. The new year is an opportunity to respond to it. So let us learn to open our eyes and see good possibilities in every stranger; let us open our hearts to the ways in which God is being revealed to all who come to the stable. In the name of God, our creator and redeemer. Amen.

This Sunday, January 6

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This Sunday happens to fall on January 6th, the feast of Epiphany. On Epiphany, we remember the people tradition calls “the wise men,” who were likely astrologers from a place we now call Iran. During the sermon, we will talk about these “wise men” and their interaction with the mad king Herod. Herod was the guardian of the old light. He was the one tried to preserve a very literal fulfillment of Judah’s hope for a king (himself) and a Temple (the one he built). But the “wise men” herald the coming of a new light, and, not surprisingly, Herod finds this threatening. I hope you will come and learn about “the old light and the new” this Sunday and celebrate Epiphany with us!
Also, don’t forget that it’s communion Sunday.

What a strange child! (Luke 2.41-52)

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“What a Strange Child!” (Luke 2.41-52)
Eastminster United Presbyterian Church, Christmas 1C (December 30, 2018)
Tom James

The movie Home Alone is considered a Christmas movie, even though its themes have nothing to do with Christmas. The McCallister family is about to take a trip to Paris over the Christmas holidays, and they accidentally leave behind their young son, Kevin (played by McCauley Culkin), who had been banished to the attic the night before for acting up. The movie is a comedy because it tracks Kevin’s hilarious successes in fending off would-be burglars who come to learn that he is “home alone.” But if there is a tinge of pathos in the movie, it is in the mixture of panic and guilt that we see in Kevin’s mother, played by Catherine O’Hara, as she learns that she has left Kevin home by himself, and as she tries to orchestrate a quick return from Paris.
I’ve never been a mother, of course, but I have been and still am a mother’s son, and I have wondered many times about how sons cause mothers worry. Sons seem to be perfectly equipped, in many ways, to create worry in mothers.
Jesus was no exception. And we can well imagine the worry, the mixture of panic and guilt, felt by Mary as she cried out to stop the caravan and turn it around, and as she searched for Jesus in the big city, perhaps yelling out orders for family members and friends to look in the market, or the carpenter’s shop, or at so-and-so’s house.
In the ancient world, it was quite common to tell stories about the unusual infancy or childhood of legendary or heroic figures. It was as if to say, “look at how God—or the gods—have blessed this person from the very beginning with strength, or with wisdom, or even with magical ability.” In some ways, this story fits that mold, but on the other hand, there isn’t anything superhuman about the twelve-year-old Jesus we find in this story. A careful reading of these verses doesn’t indicate any kind of inexplicable intelligence or wisdom of Jesus as he sat in the temple with the learned men. We sometimes get the idea from the story that Jesus was actually instructing them, but the text doesn’t say that. Instead, it simply says that Jesus’ answers were remarkably good. It was a common teaching method in the ancient world to have students respond to questions, just as it is today. And Jesus performed well as a student. He didn’t teach the rabbis—but he did learn from them, gobbling up as much knowledge as he could, so motivated that he was a standout among the young students the rabbis were likely teaching. We can think of this as a bar mitzvah class or a confirmation class, where Jesus emerges as one of the best students because he is the most motivated, perhaps among the brightest, and, we can imagine, among the best listeners to what the rabbis have to say to him.
What was maybe a little unusual about Jesus, though not unheard of, is that he wanted to be “in school,” if you will, at all. After all, this was not his home. It may have been the best place to find a top-shelf rabbi, but it wasn’t where his friends were, or where his own bed and his own mother’s cooking would have been waiting for him at the end of the day. The unusual thing is that he was so irresistibly drawn to a unique opportunity to learn. It was time for vacationing, for kicking back and relaxing, maybe taking in a little sight-seeing, storing up images and anecdotes to impress your friends back home—not sitting with a bunch of stuffy rabbis and learning Torah!
They found him after three days looking. Mary once again had her child. The panic was over, though maybe not the guilt. The end of the story gives us a very interesting, and familiar, detail—we are told that Mary pondered these things in her heart. Sound familiar? It’s the same thing we find in the Christmas story itself, actually just earlier in this very same chapter. Mary pondered these things in her heart. It seems that this is her typical response in Luke. She pondered things in her heart. And, indeed, there was a lot to ponder! There were hardships, having to find sleep in a barn. There were wonders, a mysterious star, shepherds, and angels. There were frightful prophecies about the deliverance of Israel that to a young Jewish mother at that time must have meant a future of warfare and danger. And there was above mystery woven through all these contradictory thoughts and emotions. And here, some twelve years later, though only a few verses in Luke’s telling, we find her pondering once again. In the wake of a frightful loss of a child and a city-wide search, with all of the self-questioning and self-doubting, with all of the frantic searching of memories to try and imagine where Jesus had been left and then where he might have gone, with all of the relief of having found him again, mixed with anger at him now for so nonchalantly and coolly greeting them, and, we can imagine, the pride at having found him with the rabbis, and them being clearly impressed with her son. All of this she ponders.
During Advent, I said that what makes Mary remarkable is the simplicity of her “yes” to God in the face of a future to come that she could not fully know. Well, now, as if by drips at first, things the future is beginning to arrive. Wonders are unfolding, a mother’s love and patience and faith are beginning to be tested, anxieties and fears are being felt, and a destiny of promise is just beginning to creep into her horizon of vision. And she ponders these things.
In Home Alone, McCauley Culkin’s character, Kevin, uses all kinds of ingenuity to set traps for the burglars, who as the movie progresses, become less and less interested in taking things and more and more interested in simply hurting Kevin. He is a little genius, it seems, and also more than a little bit cruel.  Little Jesus is pretty sharp, too, and is cruel enough at least to be cool to his mother after she has turned the city upside down looking for him. But that’s pretty much where any similarity between the two of them ends. Jesus isn’t trying to protect himself and his domain. As he would do time and time again during his ministry some twenty years later, he is risking himself in order to venture into new territory. Jesus lingers behind, forsaking the protection of his family, as he would later cross angry seas, strike out into regions where he was a foreigner and not welcome, risk interaction with various kinds of social outcasts and hated persons, challenge authorities (including the rabbis!), and fail to utter a word in self-defense in the face of the crushing brutality of Roman justice. Mary couldn’t ponder these things yet, because they hadn’t yet happened—but I wonder if she couldn’t see them coming as she looked into the determined face of her little boy.
This slightly strange child, a source of wonder and bemusement to his mother, is going to bring all of that wonder to bear on the world, on you and me. We will feel the effects of his courage and his passion. We will be among the sheep of another flock that he gathers. Whether we are home alone, with the rabbis in the temple, at work, on vacation, in jail, laid up in the hospital, or on the road, in the bright lights of Christmastime or in its dull afterglow, Jesus reaches out to us and invites us to join his caravan, not back to the comforts of home in Galilee, but on journey of service, love, worship, and compassion.
Ever since my wife and I became ministers, we’ve had services to lead on Christmas eve, and so if we travel over the holidays it is not usually until after Christmas day has come and gone. So we spend Christmas on our couch, with unwashed hair, wearing our jammies, and with any luck napping at least once. It is not very exciting, but it is just what we need. But Jesus allows us just this little time of homely comfort before the caravan begins to gather, and the world beckons each of us once again. Our kids eventually get us off our couches, if nothing else does, and I wonder if there is isn’t an important lesson in that about the meaning of Christ’s coming. Even if he was left behind, Jesus’ childlike enthusiasm for the adventure of faith runs way ahead of Mary’s and Joseph’s, and it never wears off. To follow him, to be called by his name, is in a way to be led by a child, to learn once more to be a child, forsaking safety and security for the sake the joy of being a part of what God is doing in the world.

May we ponder these things as Mary pondered them. May the wonder of new life capture our attention and our hearts. In the name of God, our creator and redeemer. Amen. 

This Sunday, December 30

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There is a now-classic Christmas movie one of my kids just watched during her break from school. It’s called “Home Alone,” and it is about the adventures of a 12-year-old boy (Kevin) who has been inadvertently left behind while his family goes on vacation over the holidays. During this Sunday’s sermon, I’m going to give a little of a review of Home Alone and compare it the story of Jesus staying behind to discuss the Scriptures with Temple scribes in Luke 2. 41-52. Does the sermon title, “What a strange child!,” refer to Kevin in Home Alone, or to Jesus in the Temple, or both? I hope you will come and continue our Christmastide celebration this Sunday at Eastminster!

Christmas Eve meditation (John 1.1-23)

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Christmas Eve meditation (John 1.1-23)
Eastminster United Presbyterian Church, 2018
Tom James
We have been waiting. Waiting is a crucial part of what it means to be human. It’s also an essential feature of the Christian faith. We wait for the fulfillment of God’s promises. We wait for the coming of the Messiah. We wait for the end of the story, when, we hope, it will all make sense.
Tonight, we remember that the key to the story of human history has already been given. The Christmas message is Immanuel, God with us. And so, tonight, we sing carols and we tell the story of Christ’s coming. There are several versions of the story. One of them is the Gospel of John. This version has none of the familiar features we associate with Christmas pageants and the like—no shepherds, no angels, not even a Mary or a Joseph. Instead, we focus on the themes: what the story means, mixing into our telling of the story both Scripture and song…….
john 1.1-3a
1In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. 2He was in the beginning with God. 3All things came into being through him, and without him not one thing came into being.
Jesus comes to us as the word. Jesus is the word because he is the expression of God’s heart. John’s Gospel tells us that the word was involved in the creation itself. God does not exist without the word. God is never without something to say. According to the book of Genesis, the world itself comes into being through what God says. And the aim of what God says is love. God creates the world out of love. God liberates Israel from slavery out of love. God sends prophets out love. And it all comes to fulfillment in Jesus. Jesus is the best expression we have of love, the most fully articulate expression of what God has been saying all along.
john 1.3b-9
What has come into being 4in him was life, and the life was the light of all people.
5The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness did not overcome it.6There was a man sent from God, whose name was John. 7He came as a witness to testify to the light, so that all might believe through him. 8He himself was not the light, but he came to testify to the light. 9The true light, which enlightens everyone, was coming into the world.
We’ve all heard the saying that Jesus is the “light of the world.” It comes from another passage from the Gospel of John. Here, the phrase is, “the light of all people.” What strikes me, though, is that, in this passage, “the light of all people” is a way of describing something else. First, we are told, in him was life. One of the most important things we can say about Jesus is that in him was life. Not just that he was alive, but that, with the coming of Christ, life appeared. It is as if all the living that was done before him was just a dress rehearsal, and now it is time for the real thing. Jesus is life, the true life of humanity that we were always meant to have and to be. That is why the life of Jesus is the light of all people: his life, from its very beginning, shows us what true life is. If we follow the story out, true life is being a healer rather than a destroyer and a user; true life is crossing borders and boundaries to share humanity with others; true life is attention to the least of these; true life is faithfulness; true life is a willingness to give life.
john 1.10-13
10He was in the world, and the world came into being through him; yet the world did not know him. 11He came to what was his own, and his own people did not accept him. 12But to all who received him, who believed in his name, he gave power to become children of God, 13who were born, not of blood or of the will of the flesh or of the will of man, but of God.
Jesus wasn’t supposed to be rejected. The coming of the Messiah was supposed to unite the people and lead them, like Moses, to liberation from their colonizers. At least that’s what many people thought. After Jesus was arrested and handed over to the empire to be killed, his disciples searched the scriptures to see if they could make sense of what happened. What they found was that, far from a rebuttal of his status as Messiah, being rejected by the people was actually part of the job description. The Messiah was always going to be rejected. The true life of the world wakes us from our sleepwalking, our zombie existence. The true life of the world challenges us and calls us to cross borders and boundaries, to give attention to the least of these, and experience life by giving it away. Not everyone will be up for that. But with those who are, Jesus shares his life, and his power, and his grace. To those, to us, he gives his power to be children of God.
john 1.14-17
14And the Word became flesh and lived among us, and we have seen his glory, the glory as of a father’s only son, full of grace and truth.
15(John testified to him and cried out, “This was he of whom I said, ‘He who comes after me ranks ahead of me because he was before me.’”)16From his fullness we have all received, grace upon grace. 17The law indeed was given through Moses; grace and truth came through Jesus Christ.
The title, “Son of God,” is not often used in the gospels. By itself, it only means someone who is faithful to God. Kings and prophets and various people of God may be called “sons” or “daughters” of God. But, here, John’s Gospel tells us that we have seen the glory as a “father’s only son.” There is something unique about Jesus. He is “son of God” in a special way. It isn’t just that he is faithful, but that he fully carries out God’s purposes. And that is his glory.
We should recognize something stunning here. Again, follow out the story. What does Jesus do, and where does the story lead? After border and boundary crossings, after healing and offerings of forgiveness, after teaching and preaching and criticizing corrupt leaders and officials, Jesus’ story leads to betrayal and execution. And that is glory. From ignoble beginnings in a feeding trough, because there is no proper room for him, to an ignoble end on a cross, behold the glory of God. Irenaeus, one of the great theologians of the early church, once said the glory of God is humanity fully alive. Once again, we come back to what it means to be truly and fully alive as a human being. Not only does it mean crossing borders and boundaries, paying attention to the least of these, healing, forgiving, and loving—apparently it means risking oneself to betrayal. It means giving oneself for the sake of love. That’s how we are children of God.
john 1.19-23, 29
19This is the testimony given by John when the Jews sent priests and Levites from Jerusalem to ask him, “Who are you?” 20He confessed and did not deny it, but confessed, “I am not the Messiah.” 21And they asked him, “What then? Are you Elijah?” He said, “I am not.” “Are you the prophet?” He answered, “No.” 22Then they said to him, “Who are you? Let us have an answer for those who sent us. What do you say about yourself?” 23He said, “I am the voice of one crying out in the wilderness, ‘Make straight the way of the Lord,’” as the prophet Isaiah said.
29The next day he saw Jesus coming toward him and declared, “Here is the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world!
John the Baptist represents the entirety of the Hebrew Scriptures. He points to the Messiah in the same way that the hope of Israel has always done. But he goes a step further. He says, “here he is.” And not only that, he goes far beyond our expectations. The reality here exceeds what we have imagined or hoped for. It is not only Scripture that reveals the Messiah, but it is also experience, history—life itself. To say that Immanuel is here—that God is with us in the flesh—means that who he is and what he means for us can only be known as we experience him. Jesus is revealed—the Word of God is spoken—not in a vacuum, and not to prophets or scholars or priests, but to us, in our lives, in our experience.

This is the meaning of Christmas, friends. The savior is not a character in an old story or a topic for a sermon. The savior is not even a few words in our favorite carol, but a living reality in our midst. The savior is the power of salvation that we feel in our bones tonight, calling us to life, enabling us to cross borders and boundaries, to pay attention to the least of these, to heal, to forgive, to give, and to love. The savior is one who is born in us today. Amen.

The one of peace (Micah 5.1-5a)

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The one of peace (Micah 5.1-5a)
Eastminster United Presbyterian Church, Advent 4C (December 23, 2018)
Tom James

I’ve said it before, but it bears repeating. The word “Advent” has a specific meaning. Literally, it means “coming.” This is a brief, four-week season right on the cusp of Christmas, placed right here and now to remind us that our Christian faith is built on hope for a better world. During these days, we await the coming of the Lord, when the world will be set right, when wars will cease, when injustices will be overcome, when fears and sorrows will be turned into joy.
Advent happens right here and now, though, when wars continue to rage, when injustices still multiply, when fears and sorrows sometimes engulf us. The word of the gospel comes not to a world that is getting better and better all the time, but to a world that is, you might say, under siege. Worse than that, the word of the gospel comes to a world that is on the verge of destroying itself, that courts catastrophe and seems to have no solutions to the problems that it creates. The word comes us who have created armies which now dominate us, encircling us, drawing off our resources, choking out our life. The word comes to us who have created an economy that turns us all into dispensable drones, cogs in a machine to create wealth while destroying the people, using our bodies and minds as fuel to be consumed. And so, it is appropriate, perhaps, that one of the prophetic texts that come to us just a few days before Christmas in 2018, here and now, was written for a people who appear to have been under a literal siege.
The prophet Micah lived and wrote during the eighth century B.C.E., partly during the reign of King Hezekiah in Judah. This was during the expansion of the Assyrian empire which destroyed the northern kingdom of Israel in 722 and threatened the southern kingdom of Judah, from which Micah wrote. We know from history that, at one point, an Assyrian army encircled Jerusalem itself. This is where our selection from Micah’s prophecy comes from.
But we need to take a step back. Some of us may remember some of Micah’s most famous lines—“What does the Lord require of you, but to do justice, to love kindness, and to walk humbly with your God?” The prophet preached and wrote in the context of a kingdom, and kingdoms in the ancient world were set up for two reasons: first, to maintain a standing army; and, second, to extract surplus produce from the countryside. And these two reasons were closely related. In other words, kingdoms represented a massive centralization of wealth and power, and were able to maintain their dominance by means of a permanent armed force that was used to exact tributes from the peasantry, to protect massive accumulations of private wealth, and to keep peasants, who actually produced most of the wealth in the ancient world, feeling helpless and afraid. The ancient kingdom was, in fact, just what the tradition of Moses had refused and fled because the early Israelites understood that kingdoms inevitably meant slavery, whether it be the kingdom of Egypt or of the city-states of ancient Palestine which they fought off during Joshua’s time. And, so, prophets always had issues with kingdoms, and Micah was no exception. In fact, you might say that prophets like Micah, and, later, Jeremiah, were telling Judah that, if you want to play the kingdom game, just be aware that there are those who are going to be able to play it better, like Assyria and Babylon, then later, like Persia, and Greece, and Rome. And just be aware that you might end up being slaves again. In fact, ancient world history can be read as a series of great kingdoms succeeding one another in violent suppression of the lands and people of the ancient world.
Israel was not created to play this game. Israel was created to be different, to be a light, a beacon of righteousness to the nations. Israel was to be a land in which the vulnerable were not forgotten; in which land and work were to be shared; where there would be justice and peace. But here we are in Micah’s time, with the Assyrians on their doorstep, with Judah having tried to play the kingdom game, having bet on its armies, and lost.
Here comes a little word that changes everything. The word is “but.” That little word, so easy to miss, signals a change in direction that sums up the meaning of Christmas. “But you, O Bethlehem of Ephrathah, who are one of the little clans of Judah, from you shall come forth for me one who is to rule in Israel.” Bethlehem was a small town, in the shadow of Jerusalem. It was quite easily overlooked. Bethlehem, though it was not far from Jerusalem, might as well have been a thousand miles away. It had nothing to do with the halls of power in the kingdom. It was outside of the royal courts; its inhabitants were far removed from the line of royal succession. Bethlehem was the settlement of a minor clan and not a great family. If you had been there, you would have found it easily forgettable.
But we do remember Bethlehem, right? It isn’t forgettable to us Christians. We read about it every year. We have songs about it! But it didn’t turn out to be the seat of a new monarchy for Judah. It wasn’t as if leaders in Judah read Micah’s prophecy and thought, great, let’s move the capital to Bethlehem and start a whole new kingdom, a whole new dynasty, and then maybe we’ll be able to hold out against these empires that always threaten us. No. What was to happen at Bethlehem, many centuries later, was that a story was to take hold of something much more in line with Micah’s other famous words—less a matter of setting up a grand kingdom than with acting justly, loving mercy, and walking humbly with God. What was to happen at Bethlehem, many centuries later, was that songs would be sung of a new beginning, humble, in a stable, with animals and shepherds and a peasant family from Nazareth.
One these peasants from Nazareth, many centuries later, was given the same gift of prophecy that Micah had. Before she went to Bethlehem with Joseph, Mary of Nazareth cried out that God had “looked with favor on the lowliness of his servant.” She would go on to say, “[God] has shown strength with his arm; he has scattered the proud in the thoughts of their hearts. He has brought down the powerful from their thrones, and lifted up the lowly; he has filled the hungry with good things, and sent the rich away empty.”
Now, if we are being honest with ourselves, Mary’s words sound a little divisive. After all, Christmas is for the powerful and the rich, too, is it not? But, in the ancient world, it was understood that the rich are rich precisely because they have taken from the poor. There was no theory of all boats rising with economic growth in the ancient world—for the good reason that that’s not how it worked! Kings grew rich by siphoning off wealth from the countryside, and that meant that those who lived in the villages in places like Galilee worked not for themselves but for those who ruled: the great and the powerful. It meant that they had barely enough to survive, even though they produced more than enough. It meant that much of what they worked for was taken from them by force of arms. And that meant that the simmering antagonisms between city and country, between rich and poor, could only be resolved by redressing the imbalance between them. So, the “one of peace” that Micah prophesied many centuries earlier is the one who restores community in Judah by destroying the imbalances that fracture and divide it. Lift up the low places; level the high places to make the road straight. Lift up the lowly; humble the great. Give good things to the poor; send the rich away empty. Establish justice in the land. And then you will have peace.
And so it is. For unto you this day a child is born. Unto you a son is given. A new beginning comes to life. Not a new king or a new kingdom. Not a new ruler or a new master. They will call him “Lord,” but he will be the kind of Lord that forces us to rethink what we mean by “Lord.” He will be one who teaches us how to love and respect each other; how to form true community with each other. He will be one who teaches us how to cross borders and boundaries, who inspires us to imagine that there is now no longer Greek nor Jew, slave nor free, male nor female, that we are all siblings in Christ.
Many centuries later, we still haven’t caught up with the meaning of Christmas. Perhaps we are still a little too tied to the prestige of kingdoms, a little too impressed with splendor and power.
Our annual celebration is just two days away, now. Hopefully, we are ready—or at least ready enough not to have to scramble. And, as always, for most of us, Christmas day will be a day wrapped in the familiar. Traditions that we have honored for years, if not for generations. Familiar songs, foods, and faces. The same tree, perhaps, hung with ornaments that recall pleasant memories of perhaps simpler times. And yet, the full meaning of what we are doing is still a mystery, as always. There is something unfamiliar amid all the familiarity. The one whose coming we celebrate is still bringing new life, still announcing a new world, still shaking our expectations, still challenging our kingdoms, still calling us to a better way. And we still can’t imagine quite what that means.
And that’s ok. Because the one who comes is meant to confound us, to cause us to reach out a little beyond what we know, maybe even beyond what is comfortable. The one who comes is meant to stir our imaginations and to stretch our abilities.

And, so, may each of us wake up in a couple days like that great Charles Dickens character, Ebenezer Scrooge, rejoicing that night has not taken us, that the kingdoms of the world have not destroyed us, rejoicing in a day that is new. May each of us receive our savior as a promise and an invitation to life, as the one who brings peace. In the name of God, our creator and redeemer. Amen.

From shame to praise (Zephaniah 3.14-20)

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“From shame to praise” (Zephaniah 3.14-20)
Eastminster United Presbyterian Church, Advent 3C (December 16, 2018)
Tom James
When I go to the store, I’m focused on what I’m going to buy. In fact, I start to zero in on my target well before I enter the store. Even when I’m in the parking lot, I’m already thinking about that sweater I’m going to get someone for Christmas, or that tool I need for some project I’m working on. And that means that I’m not thinking about my car as I pull into my parking spot—or, more importantly, where that spot is in relation to all the others. And so, pretty often, I exit the store with that prized purchase, feeling like I’ve accomplished my mission, and then look out on that sea of cars in the parking lot and have no idea where mine is. At that point, it’s time for a guess. Hopefully, my guess gets me close enough so that I can at least see some part of my car and then quickly and as gracefully as possible make the necessary course adjustments. But then, there are those times when I guess wrong. And then, of course, rather than worrying whether I will find my car, I worry about whether someone will see me looking for it. That blank expression on my face, wandering aimlessly, furiously pushing buttons on my key fob hoping that I will see the flashing lights as my car unlocks—I can’t imagine it’s a very good look.
Now, I can tell that story because we all know what it is like to be embarrassed. It’s a little uncomfortable, but in order to deal with the shame of embarrassment that is certain to come in life, we have to learn at some point to laugh at ourselves.
But there’s something that cuts a level deeper than embarrassment. Something that we can’t deal with simply by laughing it off. I’m talking about humiliation. Most of us have stories of being humiliated, too, but the person or people we tell those stories to have to earn the right to hear them. We don’t trust just anybody with stories of humiliation. They cut to the core of who we are—they threaten the image we may have of ourselves, and we need to know that the people with whom we entrust those stories and those feelings won’t trample on us or somehow make our humiliation worse. We have to feel like they are on our side before we expose our inner selves to them in that way.
The thing about humiliation is that it tends to stick with you, like gum to the bottom of a shoe. It’s like a mark or a burden that we can carry around for a long time. It creates a memory that is hard to shake, and it can also affect our expectations. In fact, in extreme cases, a humiliation can all but take away our sense of a meaningful future. We feel defeated, beaten, helpless, unable to move forward.
Groups can feel that way, too. I’ve enjoyed watching my children’s sports teams over the past few years, and I’ve seen the pattern I learned from my own childhood sports experiences being repeated—a bad play or some bad luck can get easily amplified in its effects because the team gets down on itself, loses confidence, gets rattled. It’s why I don’t watch college sports much anymore—North Carolina basketball, or Michigan football! How often they disappoint!
But sometimes it’s way more important than sports. I’m struck by a line from our Old Testament reading for this morning. God says, “I will remove disaster from you.” What’s interesting about this is that disaster is not treated as an unfortunate event that comes and then is gone—rather, disaster is something that the people possess. Disaster is something that clings to them, like a stain, like a burden they must bear, like gum on their shoes.
This passage was most likely written during a time of exile after the kingdom of Judah had been destroyed, after its temple had been leveled and its leadership taken captive. It was written, in other words, in the wake a stinging defeat. These are words that are spoken from the depths of a lasting humiliation. And so, the disaster that has befallen Judah—and if we follow the story, we recognize that it comes in no small part because of their own faults—this disaster is something that Judah has to live with. It’s a shame that remains attached to them, exposing them before the nations and before each other.
Shame is not something that we talk about very much in the church. I guess it’s for a good reason—shame is something that wants to stay hidden! But I wonder how much you and I, and how much our little group of Christians today, are plagued by shame. I wonder if we don’t look around ourselves sometimes and see empty pews, and feel a little twinge of defeat. We remember when these pews weren’t so empty, when the church was much stronger and more influential than it is now, when we had to break out the folding chairs to accommodate everyone who heard our voice and responded to the call to worship in this place.
I’m not talking about guilt. Those of us who are here are doing our best, and we know that there are forces beyond our control that have a lot to do with how things stand today. But, still, becoming smaller, less powerful, less respected, less noticed, even—doesn’t that sometimes stir feelings of shame?
And we know that, sometimes, shame visits people who have done nothing wrong. A good part of Job’s famous suffering was shame. Anyone who has been sick for a long time or who has borne the burden of a long season of grief and hears for the thousandth time, “how are you feeling today?” knows that even well-meaning compassion can remind us of our weaknesses and ratchet up feelings of defeat.
Would it surprise you to know that the Bible is much more preoccupied with the problem of shame than with the problem of guilt? Guilt is an obsession that comes much later in history when our culture became more and more focused on the inner experiences of individuals. Guilt is driven by a sense of moral failings; guilt is hidden on the inside of us, but shame is for all to see: it comes from defeat, from being exposed as weak and fragile, from public disgrace.
And, so, shame is something that, in order to be freed from, requires that our defeats must somehow be reversed. It isn’t enough to be forgiven or to experience some kind of psychological change that makes us see ourselves differently. For our shame to be removed, our circumstances must be changed. This is the way Zephaniah puts it:
How can this happen? Researcher Brené Brown has studied shame and how it is overcome. According to Brown, shame can’t survive being spoken. There’s something about telling the story of our humiliations that takes away their power over us. But, of course, we can’t just tell anyone. We have to find people that we trust—perhaps, people who have undergone similar defeats. Support groups and recovery groups are incredibly important. They allow people to speak their shame among people who understand it, and speaking it can actually begin to destroy it.
Well, but, does that change our circumstances?
It can. The shame of alcoholism is the loss of control the alcoholic has over their life. Recovery groups can help them put their life back together. The shame of a nation’s destruction is that there is no more national identity—the bonds are broken, and the power of collective action is gone. But, in exile, people can begin to share their stories and to rebuild the old solidarities, and a nation can be reborn, perhaps even refounded. As Zephaniah says, God may gather them, and bring them home, no longer a people who, in their indifference and complacency, are ripe for destruction, but a people have been tested and who know what it takes to be a people.
Ultimately, what changes us, and what takes away our shame, is not a stroke of luck or a series of them. It is the insistent spirit of life within us, the spirit of God who comes to us in our weakness and isolation and makes a people out of us, who gathers us anew: moving us from weakness to strength, from complacency and boredom to bold and intentional action, from an inward focus that seeks simply to maintain ourselves as we were to an outward focus that seeks to impact the world.
God’s advent, God’s interruption, happens within us. Things may not look all that different. All that happens is that we begin to get real. We talk to each other—more than just Sunday pleasantries but our hopes, our dreams, our disappointments, and, yes, our humiliations and defeats. In other words, we tell our stories. We open ourselves to the truth. And the truth begins to free us, and we find that our conversations are taking us somewhere. And then, we listen to the stories of those around us. The shame that keeps us shackled to strategies of mere survival begins to lose its power, and, in its place, faith. And, with faith, new life.
This is nothing other than the story of Christ’s church, from age to age. And the story lives today because it keeps getting restarted. We need new beginnings in order to be the church. We need advents. We need to welcome the savior, again and again, in order to be who we are.
“And I will save the lame and gather the outcast, and I will change their shame into praise and renown in all the earth. 20At that time I will bring you home, at the time when I gather you; for I will make you renowned and praised among all the peoples of the earth, when I restore your fortunes before your eyes, says the Lord.”

 O come, O come, Immanuel. In the name of God, our creator and redeemer. Amen.

This Sunday, December 16th

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Have you ever been embarrassed? I’m guessing all of us have. Usually, we can laugh at ourselves when we are embarrassed. But there is a step beyond embarrassment that isn’t funny at all: humiliation. Being humiliated is painful, and the stigma that we feel can last a long time. This Sunday, we will be talking a little about the humiliation that was experienced by the people of Judah when they lost their kingdom and their temple. The last section of the book of Zephaniah (3.14-20) was written to address their “shame,” and promises that their shame will one day be turned into “praise.” This turning of shame into praise is one of the facets of the gem of hope we know as “Advent.” Essentially, Advent means that God is still God, and therefore pain, guilt, and shame can never have the last word: pain can be turned into healing, guilt can be turned into forgiveness, and shame can be turned into praise. In what ways have we experienced shame as Christians in the twenty-first century? And, more importantly, how might that shame be turned into praise? 

Hope to see you Sunday!