"issumagijoujungnainermik"
Psalm 19
I mentioned a couple of weeks ago that I've spent some time in Benedictine monasteries. I think I talked about the silent retreats I've been on.
I would spend time in conversation with the monks as well. Asking them about their lives. What life was like in the monastery. The comparison to my own theological education as a pastor, and theirs as monks.
What I discovered was that there are two main qualities to a monk's training and my own as a Presbyterian pastor. Those two differences are described by two words that came up in one of my conversations with one of the monks in Conception Abbey, a monastery up in northwest Missouri.
One word was meditatio. It's a word that describes the practice of meditating slowly over the Biblical text in order to hold the text and be held by it. When I was in seminary, we dissected the text. We parsed the life out of it. We translated the Hebrew and Greek. We redacted the text, trying to find out if it was a gloss, an authentic saying, or whatnot. We cut and pasted the text, especially the books of the law, into the J, E, P, and D traditions. We used historical criticism, literary criticism, redaction criticism, and every other kind of criticism devised by theologians. We read tomes upon tomes of what theologians thought about the text.
Are you understanding any of that? Neither did I at the time. And even though I did really well in seminary, I always felt like there was something missing. Or that we were doing it wrong--the way we educate our pastors.
But I didn't know what it was, or how to put a finger on it until I had that conversation with the monk at Conception Abbey. Meditatio. We, unlike the monks, never came at the Biblical text with respect. We never came at the Bible as if they were words that could hold us. That they were words of power. Words that deserved our lengthy contemplation. That we weren't to just find out what others did with the words or thought about them. But what we, caught up in the Spirit, as we respectfully held these words, could also find ourselves held by them.
The other word I learned was contemplatio. Contemplatio is the soulful resting in the presence of the Divine Mystery. What? I thought. Mystery? There are no mysteries in seminary. If you just dissect things long enough, you can solve all mysteries. For example, here's the mystery: Who was Jesus of Nazareth? Where and when I was at seminary, the mystery was solved. When you dissect, and parse that question down, what you get is that the only thing we can know about Jesus is that he was an itinerant preacher who taught about the kingdom of God. That's it. Mystery solved. Case closed. Move along.
But after talking with the monk at Conception Abbey, I knew that was the other thing I missed in my theological and pastoral training. Contemplatio, or contemplation. Of not having to worry about my own theology of God, but simply resting in God's presence. Of not worrying about solving the mystery of God, but just enjoying God. Of learning how to prayerfully put my soul in God's hands and let go.
When I learned those two words, and the power of them, I was suddenly angry. Angry at the way I had been educated to be a pastor. Angry that we had it all wrong. Angry that we are still cranking out ministers in a system that has lost touch with meditatio and contemplatio. And thereby have lost touch with God. I have been so thankful for that conversation with that monk over the years that have come and gone since having it.
Psalm 19, like my monk friend, is asking that we do the same thing. Psalm 19 knows that we need to nurture our faith. And that there are specific ways to nurture our faith that are helpful, rather than harmful. Psalm 19 bids us enter the life of meditatio and contemplatio.
Psalm 19 is directing our meditatio and contemplatio in three different directions: meditation of creation, meditation on the Law, or the Word of God, and meditation on our sin and God's forgiveness. Let's take a look at all three.
First meditation on creation. One of the first questions Psalm 19 forces us to ask is, What's the difference between pondering just creation vs. pondering God's creation?
The great cello player, Pablo Casals, once wrote,
When I awake in the morning I go immediately to the sea, and everywhere I find God in the smallest and in the largest things. I see Him in colors and designs and forms...The world is a miracle only God could make. Think of how no two grains of sand are alike; how there is not one nose, one voice like another; how among billions and billions of living and non-living things in the Universe no two are exactly alike. Who but God could do that? God must be present all the time! Nothing can take that from us!
There's the answer to that question. We don't contemplate creation, says Psalm 19, just for creation's sake. We aren't just trying to get in touch with the world around us--although that happens. We are contemplating God. We are trying to see God. We are trying to touch the mystery behind creation.
You don't hear people say, "I feel closer to nature when I'm out in nature." Instead, you hear them say, "I feel closer to God when I'm out in nature." That's the difference. It's a recognition of the silent God, says Psalm 19, who stands behind and within the beauty. In nature, in all the vast beauty and magnificence of the universe, God is silently trying to woo us into attention of himself.
Some mice made their nest in a certain piano. When they heard music, they decided to investigate. One mouse came back to the nest and reported the music came from various lengths of wire. Another mouse claimed the music came from the felted hammers that hit the wires. The mice heard the music but they never saw the "invisible" pianist. They weren't able to see the movement of the strings and hammers and deduce there was some one behind those movements. Psalm 19 is bidding us see the artist behind the beauty of the world. To contemplate not just that world, but the One who is the silent Aritist/Creator of it all.
Secondly, Psalm 19 bids us nurture our faith by meditating on the Law, or the Word of God. One Bible commentator, D.T. Niles once said, "The Bible is a record of a conversation with God that has gone on for a long time and involved many different people. When you read the Bible the right way, you'll find you are being drawn into that conversation."
That's the purpose of meditating on, or contemplating God's word. It isn't so you can have knowledge about the Bible, or so you can understand the laws of God, or even gain an understanding of right and wrong. Although all that will happen. The purpose of meditating on the Word of God is to get pulled into that long line of conversation with God that has been going on since Day One.
A girl, just graduated from high school, was given a book as a gift. One night, she skimmed through it, not really reading it, but trying to get a grasp of it to see if she wanted to read it or not. The next morning she told her mother, "That's one of the dullest books I've ever tried to read." So she left the unmemorable book on her book shelf.
Flash forward. When in college she had a professor who ignited her imagination and curiosity. Half way through the semester she alarmingly discovered this professor was the author of the "boring" book she had received when she graduated from high school. She had her parents send her the book. She read it carefully from cover to cover. She told her professor that it was one of the best books she had ever read.
What was the difference in the first reading and the second? She had come to know the author. That's what made all the difference.
When you look at the words Psalm 19 uses to describe God's word--words like law, rules, precepts, commands, judgements--we recoil, thinking, "Ugh, who wants to think about all that?" But knowing the Author makes all the difference. That's what makes meditating on the Law, on God's Word, all worth it. Our contemplations put us in touch with the God behind the precepts, commands, and rules.
And in those we come closer to God. By coming closer to God we find out that they aren't just a bunch of boring rules, but signposts, life maps, directions and guidance for how God feels life is lived at it's best. The Law of God only makes sense when you know God, have a relationship with God. So meditating on the Word of God, as Psalm 19 suggests, is a way to find ourselves deeper and deeper into the mystery of the person of God, and direction for life in God.
Lastly, Psalm 19 is bidding us to meditate on our sin, the awareness of when we do sin, and asking God to take care of the times when we sin "without knowing it." One of the main things to notice here is that David switches to personal pronouns: I, me. In the first two-thirds of Psalm 19, David is teaching the readers about what he feels is important about God in creation, and God in the Law. Then, here in the last third, in talking about sin, David doesn't use generalities. He brings it home to himself. Whenever we contemplate, or meditate upon sin, it always has to come back to our own self-awareness.
St. Ignatius Loyola started the Jesuit order of priests and monks. It wasn't easy going at first. There were a lot of people in the Catholic church at that time who were skeptical of Ignatius' new order. There were false rumors that the Jesuits were nothing more than charlatans and magicians. But a lot of Ignatius' rule has to do with fierce self-examination.
One of the officials who went to investigate the new order came back to report. He was asked, "Did they not show you monsters or devils?"
"Worse than that," said the investigating official. "They showed me myself."
Any contemplation of sin, no matter how general, must make us use pronouns as David did: I, me. But that's not where it ends as we meditate upon our sin. Any consciousness of our personal sin must bring us into the wide arms of God's grace and forgiveness. We don't meditate about sin and then beat ourselves up. That's not God's intention, David says in his personal words about sin in this Psalm.
A hospice chaplain described one patient she was dealing with. He asked the chaplain to call his family in, because he thought he was close to death. When they were all together in the waiting room, the patient asked the chaplain to go out and ask them all to forgive him for something that happened 17 years previously. She went out and passed the message on and the family burst into tears.
They went into the man's room, and they were all holding hands and crying when the chaplain left them. She said, "The man died the next day, and I never knew what the secret was that kept him alive until he had his family's forgiveness. No one wants to die until all the unfinished business of their lives is settled," she said. "And usually it's a matter of forgiveness."
That's the reason Psalm 19 bids us contemplate our sin. It's so we can then contemplate something even greater, which is the loving forgiveness of that sin. What we desire most is to be finally, and ultimately free of it by the grace of God. That beautiful release can only happen by the power and forgiveness of God
When missionaries first went to the Eskimo people, they couldn't find a word that meant "forgiveness" in the Eskimo language. So they had to create a compound word. That word turned out to be, "issumagijoujungnainermik" (the word on your bulletin). Quite a word, eh? I challenge anyone to pronounce it. It's actually a combination of words that literally, in the Eskimo language, means, "Not being able to think about it anymore."
That's the great aspect of sin and forgiveness that Psalm 19 bids us contemplate. We have to be conscious of our sin, yes. But more importantly, once confessed it is even more important to be conscious of how God has not only forgiven that sin, but doesn't think about it anymore. Our forgiven sin does not affect our ongoing relationship with God, because it's not even on God's mind. So why is it on ours? Let it go. Contemplate that letting go forgiveness.
Meditation on creation, and the glory of God in that creation. Contemplation on the guiding Word of God, and the sign posts and direction God gives in that Word. Contemplation on our sin and the amazing Grace of God that remembers our sin no more. We probably need to meditate on all three, but maybe not all at once. At different times in our lives we need to concentrate on one over the others. They all bring us back to God, which is the point of this great Psalm.
Monday, January 28, 2013
Monday, January 21, 2013
David's Pyramid of Needs
"David's Pyramid Of Needs"
Psalm 36:5-10
Maybe you’ve heard about the “hierarchy of needs.” It’s an idea developed by a psychologist by the name of Abraham Maslow. It’s usually demonstrated in the shape of a pyramid.
Simply put, we need to be able to move from bottom to top if we are going to become, what Maslow called, a “self-actualized” human being. It’s hard to reach the peak of your potential as a person if you haven’t met some of the lower needs--if you’re starving to death, for example. It’s hard to have a sense of self-esteem if you have no friends or intimate relationships.
So we start at the bottom. A person is at-risk, so-to-speak, if they don’t have the very basic necessities of life: food, water, air. Those are the things we need just to be able to exist. No way to go any higher on the pyramid if you’re dying of thirst, or have absolutely nothing to eat.
Once you have those very basic needs met, then you need a sense of security. You need shelter. You need to be out of harm’s way. You can be well fed, but if you’re homeless and have to sleep outside, that’s not going to help you move up the pyramid.
So you get the idea. This has been used by missionary teams that I know of who have worked in places like the refugee camps in Uganda, Tanzania or Kenya. Thousands upon thousands of people pour over these boarders, trying to get away from mass, tribal genocide in their own countries. These refugees are just trying to get some place where they can get their most basic needs met. Missionaries going into these refugee camps don’t immediately start preaching Jesus. It’s hard to hear the gospel when the growling of your hungry stomach is so loud.
On one mission trip, I worked for an organization in the San Joaquin valley in California. This organization went around and got all the excess fruit (peaches and nectarines when I was there), dried them, packed them into big white buckets, and shipped them to some of those refugee camps.
One batch was sent to Sierra Leone. It’s predominantly a Muslim country. Some of the fruit we packed, along with soup mix, and other food stuffs were sent to this refugee camp. After a month of doing nothing but receiving food, these Muslim refugees came to the missionaries and said, “We want to hear about your Jesus Christ. You Christians were the only ones who fed us when we were starving. Not even our Muslim brethren did that.”
So there’s a lot to be said about a kind of evangelism that is aware of and takes care of people’s basic needs--those on the bottom of Maslow’s pyramid--before worrying about the needs on the upper tiers.
One of the things that caught my attention about this Psalm, and I don’t know if David intended it to be this way, is that his pyramid of needs is very different. If we take verse 5, 6 and the first part of verse 7 as the bottom, most basic tier of the needs pyramid, what we have there is God’s immense love, loyalty, and purpose. Without that as our base, nothing else works or makes sense. Without that as our base, anything else we build on top of that will not hold.
Let’s take a look at this bottom tier, and then work our way up. What we’re going to find is that David reverses what Maslow eventually came up with. We’ll have to decide which pyramid of needs holds more validity.
God’s love, loyalty and purpose. We know that God’s love is the basis for David’s pyramid, because he mentions it here in verse 5, 7 and 10. Whenever you see something about God mentioned a number of times, you need to pay attention. David is letting us know that God’s amazing and massively huge love is vital to all he’s saying in this Psalm.
God’s love is as far reaching as it is from earth to the heavens. God’s loyalty is as boundless and boarderless as it is from the earth to the clouds.
The heavens, is the term David uses. It’s not heaven, like we think of as Christians, that place where the Lord’s followers go after death. It’s the heavens. The heavens, for David was the great expanse of the universe. It was what he would lay down in the grass at night time, when out with the sheep, looking up through clear, dark skies to the stars. The Milky Way spread out like sugared butter on a piece of well-toasted bread. From horizon to horizon, the wide open spaces of space. That’s how David described the height and breadth of God’s love.
In classic, Hebrew poetic fashion, David layers image upon image, building a picture of God’s amazing character. David takes God’s love which is spread out like the heavens, and layers that with God’s loyalty which is large enough to fit into the space between the earth and the clouds. See how those two go together? David will use that imagery scheme throughout this Psalm--each line progressing, building, complimenting the one before it until we are overwhelmed by God.
David further describes God’s love and faithfulness as steadfast or constant. That is there is a persistent quality to God’s love. It keeps coming at us. It keeps following us. It keeps trying to get our attention.
In Men’s Bible Study we are looking at Psalm 23. This past Wednesday we were looking at the phrase, “...your goodness and mercy follow me all the days of my life.” There is this theme that David takes up so often, that our God is a persistent God who follows us, who keeps coming at us, who keep enveloping our lives with love and faithfulness. We will never be able to get away from it, just as we will never be able to get away from the largeness of the universe we find ourselves in.
“Where can I run from your presence?” David asked God in Psalm 139. Then David answers the question for God:
If I go up to the heavens, you are there;
if I make my bed in the world of the dead, you are there.
If I rise with the sun in the east
and settle in the west beyond the sea,
even there your hand shall lead me. (vs.. 7-10)
God’s persistent, all present love is as basic, or more necessary than the air we breathe.
Let’s move up to the next tier in David’s pyramid of needs in Psalm 36. The next tier, up, is protection and refuge. The image is that of a mother hen covering her chicks with her wings against harm.
As Jesus was making his way into Jerusalem, where he would be crucified, he stops on the Mount of Olives, looks across and says, “How many times I wanted to put my arms around all your people, just as a hen gathers her chicks under her wings, but you would not let me!” (Matthew 23:37).
God’s love for us, which is the first level of the pyramid, leads God to be a protective God. A God whose love is a refuge of safety where we can go when life is hard, and cruel and mean. We are kept in a safe place by God because His love is so strong, so settled, so secure. There is no security like the security of being loved with a love like that--a love that we know for sure is not going anywhere, or become unsettled.
When I was out in Leoti, I worked with a junior high kid whose mother told him nearly every day that she wished he was someone else’s kid; that he wasn’t her son; that she wished he could just go away and live with someone else.
One of his teachers screamed at him every day because he never got his homework done. She’d stand over him, yelling, “What’s wrong with you? Why can’t you just get your assignments done?” I finally took her aside and told her this boy is floundering, not because he can’t do his homework. He can. He’s able. He’s just got an unsettled love he’s having to deal with at home. He’s worrying about something much more basic--whether anyone in this world loves him. Homework is the least of his worries. He’s got to settle the love question before he’ll be able to do anything else.
God’s love is that refuge. That place of security. God’s love are those mother hen wings that are opened up over us that we always know will be there. Once we have that love question settled, then we have that sense of security that, “Hey, I’m loved, and I can deal with all the other stuff in life.”
The third level of David’s pyramid of needs is the food and drink. But for David, and especially for God, food is not just for keeping you alive. Food and drink are for celebrating. This phrase that David uses to describing “feasting on the abundant food you provide,” in the Hebrew literally means to “enjoy the fat.” What David literally said was, “We ‘enjoy the fat’ the you provide.” The fat was the best, the most flavorful part of the meat. The best cuts of meat are marbled with fat. The fat is the best.
As we look at David’s pyramid and move our way up it, we see how it all fits. We are immersed in the expanse of God’s love and loyal faithfulness. Because of that love we feel protected, secure and safe. And because of God safe-place-love, we want to party. We want to feast. We want to celebrate what God has provided. And when we feast we want to eat the best there is to eat. We want to drink, not just plain water, but water that has been dipped from “the river of God’s goodness.”
When Jesus talked about what the Kingdom of God would be like, what image did he use most often? A feast! Look in Luke 15. Several parables of things or people who were lost. When the lost was found, how did they celebrate? They had a feast! Food isn’t, as Maslow had it, just for staying alive. Food and drink are for celebrating all the goodness and love that comes from God.
At the top of David’s pyramid of needs is the Fountain of Life. On Maslow’s pyramid of needs, what he calls “self-actualization” is at the top. That is, reaching your fullest self-potential. But for David, the top of the pyramid has nothing to do with the individual. The top of David’s pyramid is God and being fully immersed in the person of God--what David calls the fountain of life.
Several times in the book of Jeremiah, God calls himself “the fountain of living waters.” When Jesus has the conversation with the Samaritan woman at the well, in John 4, Jesus tells her, “If you knew the gift of God, and who it is that is saying to you, ‘Give me a drink,’ you would have asked him, and he would have given you living water” (4:10).
To go through all the different levels that David laid out in this psalm is to reach life--life as God meant it to be lived: in God’s love and faithfulness; safe and secure in a God who covers us when the world is throwing rocks of hate and meanness; life like a feast of fat. Life, a fountain of life, because life is God.
Psalm 36:5-10
Maybe you’ve heard about the “hierarchy of needs.” It’s an idea developed by a psychologist by the name of Abraham Maslow. It’s usually demonstrated in the shape of a pyramid.
Simply put, we need to be able to move from bottom to top if we are going to become, what Maslow called, a “self-actualized” human being. It’s hard to reach the peak of your potential as a person if you haven’t met some of the lower needs--if you’re starving to death, for example. It’s hard to have a sense of self-esteem if you have no friends or intimate relationships.
So we start at the bottom. A person is at-risk, so-to-speak, if they don’t have the very basic necessities of life: food, water, air. Those are the things we need just to be able to exist. No way to go any higher on the pyramid if you’re dying of thirst, or have absolutely nothing to eat.
Once you have those very basic needs met, then you need a sense of security. You need shelter. You need to be out of harm’s way. You can be well fed, but if you’re homeless and have to sleep outside, that’s not going to help you move up the pyramid.
So you get the idea. This has been used by missionary teams that I know of who have worked in places like the refugee camps in Uganda, Tanzania or Kenya. Thousands upon thousands of people pour over these boarders, trying to get away from mass, tribal genocide in their own countries. These refugees are just trying to get some place where they can get their most basic needs met. Missionaries going into these refugee camps don’t immediately start preaching Jesus. It’s hard to hear the gospel when the growling of your hungry stomach is so loud.
On one mission trip, I worked for an organization in the San Joaquin valley in California. This organization went around and got all the excess fruit (peaches and nectarines when I was there), dried them, packed them into big white buckets, and shipped them to some of those refugee camps.
One batch was sent to Sierra Leone. It’s predominantly a Muslim country. Some of the fruit we packed, along with soup mix, and other food stuffs were sent to this refugee camp. After a month of doing nothing but receiving food, these Muslim refugees came to the missionaries and said, “We want to hear about your Jesus Christ. You Christians were the only ones who fed us when we were starving. Not even our Muslim brethren did that.”
So there’s a lot to be said about a kind of evangelism that is aware of and takes care of people’s basic needs--those on the bottom of Maslow’s pyramid--before worrying about the needs on the upper tiers.
One of the things that caught my attention about this Psalm, and I don’t know if David intended it to be this way, is that his pyramid of needs is very different. If we take verse 5, 6 and the first part of verse 7 as the bottom, most basic tier of the needs pyramid, what we have there is God’s immense love, loyalty, and purpose. Without that as our base, nothing else works or makes sense. Without that as our base, anything else we build on top of that will not hold.
Let’s take a look at this bottom tier, and then work our way up. What we’re going to find is that David reverses what Maslow eventually came up with. We’ll have to decide which pyramid of needs holds more validity.
God’s love, loyalty and purpose. We know that God’s love is the basis for David’s pyramid, because he mentions it here in verse 5, 7 and 10. Whenever you see something about God mentioned a number of times, you need to pay attention. David is letting us know that God’s amazing and massively huge love is vital to all he’s saying in this Psalm.
God’s love is as far reaching as it is from earth to the heavens. God’s loyalty is as boundless and boarderless as it is from the earth to the clouds.
The heavens, is the term David uses. It’s not heaven, like we think of as Christians, that place where the Lord’s followers go after death. It’s the heavens. The heavens, for David was the great expanse of the universe. It was what he would lay down in the grass at night time, when out with the sheep, looking up through clear, dark skies to the stars. The Milky Way spread out like sugared butter on a piece of well-toasted bread. From horizon to horizon, the wide open spaces of space. That’s how David described the height and breadth of God’s love.
In classic, Hebrew poetic fashion, David layers image upon image, building a picture of God’s amazing character. David takes God’s love which is spread out like the heavens, and layers that with God’s loyalty which is large enough to fit into the space between the earth and the clouds. See how those two go together? David will use that imagery scheme throughout this Psalm--each line progressing, building, complimenting the one before it until we are overwhelmed by God.
David further describes God’s love and faithfulness as steadfast or constant. That is there is a persistent quality to God’s love. It keeps coming at us. It keeps following us. It keeps trying to get our attention.
In Men’s Bible Study we are looking at Psalm 23. This past Wednesday we were looking at the phrase, “...your goodness and mercy follow me all the days of my life.” There is this theme that David takes up so often, that our God is a persistent God who follows us, who keeps coming at us, who keep enveloping our lives with love and faithfulness. We will never be able to get away from it, just as we will never be able to get away from the largeness of the universe we find ourselves in.
“Where can I run from your presence?” David asked God in Psalm 139. Then David answers the question for God:
If I go up to the heavens, you are there;
if I make my bed in the world of the dead, you are there.
If I rise with the sun in the east
and settle in the west beyond the sea,
even there your hand shall lead me. (vs.. 7-10)
God’s persistent, all present love is as basic, or more necessary than the air we breathe.
Let’s move up to the next tier in David’s pyramid of needs in Psalm 36. The next tier, up, is protection and refuge. The image is that of a mother hen covering her chicks with her wings against harm.
As Jesus was making his way into Jerusalem, where he would be crucified, he stops on the Mount of Olives, looks across and says, “How many times I wanted to put my arms around all your people, just as a hen gathers her chicks under her wings, but you would not let me!” (Matthew 23:37).
God’s love for us, which is the first level of the pyramid, leads God to be a protective God. A God whose love is a refuge of safety where we can go when life is hard, and cruel and mean. We are kept in a safe place by God because His love is so strong, so settled, so secure. There is no security like the security of being loved with a love like that--a love that we know for sure is not going anywhere, or become unsettled.
When I was out in Leoti, I worked with a junior high kid whose mother told him nearly every day that she wished he was someone else’s kid; that he wasn’t her son; that she wished he could just go away and live with someone else.
One of his teachers screamed at him every day because he never got his homework done. She’d stand over him, yelling, “What’s wrong with you? Why can’t you just get your assignments done?” I finally took her aside and told her this boy is floundering, not because he can’t do his homework. He can. He’s able. He’s just got an unsettled love he’s having to deal with at home. He’s worrying about something much more basic--whether anyone in this world loves him. Homework is the least of his worries. He’s got to settle the love question before he’ll be able to do anything else.
God’s love is that refuge. That place of security. God’s love are those mother hen wings that are opened up over us that we always know will be there. Once we have that love question settled, then we have that sense of security that, “Hey, I’m loved, and I can deal with all the other stuff in life.”
The third level of David’s pyramid of needs is the food and drink. But for David, and especially for God, food is not just for keeping you alive. Food and drink are for celebrating. This phrase that David uses to describing “feasting on the abundant food you provide,” in the Hebrew literally means to “enjoy the fat.” What David literally said was, “We ‘enjoy the fat’ the you provide.” The fat was the best, the most flavorful part of the meat. The best cuts of meat are marbled with fat. The fat is the best.
As we look at David’s pyramid and move our way up it, we see how it all fits. We are immersed in the expanse of God’s love and loyal faithfulness. Because of that love we feel protected, secure and safe. And because of God safe-place-love, we want to party. We want to feast. We want to celebrate what God has provided. And when we feast we want to eat the best there is to eat. We want to drink, not just plain water, but water that has been dipped from “the river of God’s goodness.”
When Jesus talked about what the Kingdom of God would be like, what image did he use most often? A feast! Look in Luke 15. Several parables of things or people who were lost. When the lost was found, how did they celebrate? They had a feast! Food isn’t, as Maslow had it, just for staying alive. Food and drink are for celebrating all the goodness and love that comes from God.
At the top of David’s pyramid of needs is the Fountain of Life. On Maslow’s pyramid of needs, what he calls “self-actualization” is at the top. That is, reaching your fullest self-potential. But for David, the top of the pyramid has nothing to do with the individual. The top of David’s pyramid is God and being fully immersed in the person of God--what David calls the fountain of life.
Several times in the book of Jeremiah, God calls himself “the fountain of living waters.” When Jesus has the conversation with the Samaritan woman at the well, in John 4, Jesus tells her, “If you knew the gift of God, and who it is that is saying to you, ‘Give me a drink,’ you would have asked him, and he would have given you living water” (4:10).
To go through all the different levels that David laid out in this psalm is to reach life--life as God meant it to be lived: in God’s love and faithfulness; safe and secure in a God who covers us when the world is throwing rocks of hate and meanness; life like a feast of fat. Life, a fountain of life, because life is God.
Monday, January 14, 2013
The Voice Of The Lord
"The Voice Of The Lord"
Psalm 29
In 1992 I went with a tour group on a trip to the Holy Land and Egypt. I’ve used one of my holy moment experiences in a previous sermon.
We spent a couple of days in Jerusalem, which were not enough. I could have spent a whole month, just in Jerusalem. I still probably wouldn’t have seen everything there is to see.
One night my best friend and I were trying to find an English speaking TV channel in our hotel room so we could catch some news. While on a tour like that, we fell into an information void, unaware of anything that was happening in the world.
We finally got a fuzzy, English speaking channel with a guy doing the weather report. We were used to TV weather reporters standing in front of a blue screen, showing maps of the jet stream, clever rain cloud graphics, and high and low pressure systems screaming or stalling across our nation. Not this guy. He was standing in front of a chalk board with the word Weather written across it. His report looked like it was being filmed in his basement.
He said, “Well, we have some weather coming. Big storm coming across the Mediterranean Sea. Lots of clouds and whirly stuff.” Then he made a swirling motion like he was stirring a big pot stew. “Nasty stuff,” he continued. The word “stuff” was used a lot; I had never heard that word used technically in a weather report like this guy was. “Clouds, and rain, and whoosh; stuff like that,” he said. “Could be some snow. But not to worry! It’s only weather!” My friend Jay and I looked at each other and burst out laughing. “It’s only weather!” we said in unison.
“It’s only weather” turned out to be the worst snow storm Jerusalem had seen in 50 years. About a foot of very wet snow shut down the city. Over laden tree branches broke off pulling down power lines. The sound of the popping branches was scary, since we had seen teenagers in Israeli army uniforms driving around all over the city in military jeeps with automatic rifles strapped to their shoulders. The breaking branches sounded like gunfire.
The city was immobilized for the day. What the PLO had tried to do on several occasions to Jerusalem, God did in a one night storm. Brought all the mighty powers to their knees. simply through moving air, and frozen water crystals. “It’s only weather” became our catch phrase for that trip whenever anything bad or upsetting happened.
David, the writer of Psalm 29, must have seen a few of these kinds of storms blow through the country. In the imagery of this Psalm, it isn’t a winter snow storm. It’s a summer thunder storm. A tornado kind of thunder storm. A Greensburg kind of storm. A storm like a gigantic vacuum cleaner that knocks everything down, then sucks it up, leaving a clean strip behind it. Not even things tied down, anchored or rooted withstand that kind of storm.
What’s unsettling about David’s storm imagery is not just the imagery. But what the imagery is describing: God’s Voice. God’s Voice is like that storm. An F5 kind of Voice that is scary and pummeling, and that people get into shelters to hide from. “It’s only weather,” becomes, “It’s only God’s Voice.” And suddenly that which we laugh off becomes scary devastation. We say we want to hear God’s Voice, but we have no idea that what we’re desiring will utterly blow us away if we were to hear it.
The book of Psalms has been called the church’s prayer book. If these Psalms teach us to pray, we need to pay attention to what they teach us about the God to whom we pray. We need to pay attention to what these Psalms teach us about prayer and worship.
What we learn about God from Psalm 29, the God to whom we pray, may be too much for most people.
First, we learn that God is a revealing God. As opposed to the mystery religions and the fertility cults that other tribal people were involved with outside of Israel, the God of Israel wanted to be known. God wants to be understood. God wants relationship with the world and the people of the world. God doesn’t want to stand aloof and apart, like the Greek gods up on Mount Olympus. Our God reveals himself in direct ways.
Usually, God does that in the march of history. When people needed a sense of connection with God in the present moment, they would first look back to times in history, when God revealed himself in some act of salvation. “We remember when you did this, and this and this, O God...Do that again, now!” the people would pray.
In Psalm 29, God reveals himself, reveals his Voice, in acts of nature. One of the characteristics of God that I’ve tried to emphasize in my messages is that God’s speaking is His main activity. When God speaks, when God uses His Voice, things happen. When we speak, a bunch of words come out, but not much happens. Adlai Stevenson once said that the media are the people who separate the wheat from the chaff and then report the chaff. That seems to be what happens most when we speak--a lot of chaff comes out.
Or there’s the story of Thomas Jefferson, who submitted his draft of the Declaration of Independence to some friends for editorial review. Jefferson quickly was getting anxious about all the red marks they were making all over his draft. Benjamin Franklin noticed Jefferson’s anxiety and told him a story.
When he was a young man, Franklin had a friend who had completed an apprenticeship as a hatter. He was ready to open his own business. He wanted a great signboard in front of the shop. He had a design drawn up that showed a picture of a hat, and over the picture it read, “John Thompson, hatter, makes and sells hats for ready money.” He showed some of his friends the design and asked them what they thought.
The first one remarked that “hatter” was unnecessary, since “makes and sells hats” already showed the nature of the business. The second person pointed out that “makes” could be left off the sign, since customers were unlikely to be interested in who made the hats. The third friend said that since it was not the custom to sell on credit, the words “for ready money” were unnecessary. Finally, one of the friends said it seemed unnecessary to have the word “hats” on the sign, since there was the picture of a hat. So the signboard eventually read, “John Thompson” with a picture of a hat under his name.
When Thomas Jefferson heard Franklin’s story, he smiled and let the editors continue their work on his draft of the Declaration of Independence.
As I mentioned in my message a couple of weeks ago, that’s what we do as human beings. We spew out a lot of words, most of which are truly unnecessary and effect nothing. But what we find out about God and God’s Voice is that God’s revelation of himself, through His Voice, always has an effect. God is a God who reveals himself through a Voice, that every time that Voice sounds there is a startling impact.
What is amazing about God’s Voice in this Psalm, though, is that God speaks no words. God’s Voice is just pure sound, like music, or a musical note. God doesn’t utter any commands like in the creation story in Genesis. There is just Voice. Just sound. And look at the results of that Voice: echoes over the ocean roar, destruction of cedar trees, mountains skip and jump, lightning flashes, deserts tremble, forests are stripped bare of their leaves.
This revealing Voice of God, the sound of God, is pure, raw power, like a clear perfect note from a trumpet. Our God is a God with a Voice--a voice of threatening, overwhelming power.
David tells how God’s Voice shatters the cedars. Let’s get a proper picture of what David is saying. You may have seen bunches of those pesky cedar trees growing in pastures as you drive along. Most are Christmas tree sized. If you are thinking that is the kind of cedar tree God is blowing over, you’d be wrong. The cedars of Lebanon David is picturing are up to 130 feet tall. They are 8 feet in diameter. We are talking about mammoth trees that were used to build ships, palaces, and temples. That is the unbelievable power of God’s revealing Voice that David is describing.
In the book, Lion, Witch and the Wardrobe, one of the children asks Mr. Beaver about Aslan the Lion, who is the Christ-figure in the book. One of the children asks if Aslan is safe. The reply (p. 75-76) is well worth considering:
Mr. Beaver replied, “If there's anyone who can appear before Aslan without their knees knocking, they're either braver than me or else just silly.”
“Then he isn't safe?” asked Lucy.
“Safe?” said Mr. Beaver. “Don't you hear what Mrs. Beaver tells you? Who said anything about safe? 'Course he isn't safe. But he's good. He's the King, I tell you.”
That’s what David is telling us about our God in Psalm 29. Our God, and God’s Voice are not safe. God is the King. And as our King, who has a Voice that can shatter mammoth cedar trees, demands our ultimate respect.
That leads to the other thing we learn from this Psalm: authentic worship. As the opening verses of the Psalm say, the best thing we can do is “Honor” and “Acclaim” the glory, power, and the name of the LORD.
God’s name is spoken in this Psalm 18 times in eleven verses. That should tell us something about who this Psalm is about. More importantly, it should give us a clue about what our relationship to the name of God is to be about.
To honor and acclaim someone else is to approach them as the superior. It is to come before them in humility, recognizing there is a gulf between you and them. That gulf in the psalm is called holiness and glory. There is so much holiness emanating from God that our only response is to fall on our face and not look.
God told a number of people in the Old Testament that they could not look at Him and live. The reason is that there is so much holiness and glory about God, that if we looked at God we would see how far from God we are, how tainted we are, how utterly human and unholy we really are. Finally and utterly seeing the difference between ourselves and God would be too much for us. It would kill us. That’s the level of humility with which we need to enter the presence of God in worship. Worship is a humbling experience.
Also, in this Psalm, notice all the energy that is generated by the presence of God. That’s a huge part of what worship is about--putting ourselves in God’s overpowering presence, which then infects us in a positive way with an unbelievable passion and zeal for God.
Worship is not something we do on a horizontal level, from people to people. It’s from God downward, and from us Godward. It is coming into worship expecting something awesome to happen. But not something that is superficial, or that we manufacture. It is the scary tiptoeing into the presence of God who just might, with His Voice, blow…...you…...away.
In her book, Teaching a Stone To Talk, Annie Dillard wrote:
Why do people in churches seem like cheerful, brainless tourists on a packaged tour of the Almighty?… Does anyone have the foggiest idea what sort of power we so blithely invoke?… It is madness to wear ladies straw hats and velvet hats to church; we should all be wearing crash helmets. Ushers should issue life preservers and signal flares; they should lash us to our pews. (page 40)
Worship is about tiptoeing into the presence of God, trembling for dear life, requesting to hear the Voice of God, while all the time realizing that if that request were granted, and a sound came out of the Voice of God there is the chance we would be shattered, moved like a mountain, or stripped bare of everything that we thought we were, all that we surrounded ourselves with for protection.
Worship is the act of falling on our faces, realizing our God is an awesome God, a fearful God, with a powerful sounding Voice. And the best way to worship that God is to honor Him as God, and give God glory with everything we do and say.
Psalm 29
In 1992 I went with a tour group on a trip to the Holy Land and Egypt. I’ve used one of my holy moment experiences in a previous sermon.
We spent a couple of days in Jerusalem, which were not enough. I could have spent a whole month, just in Jerusalem. I still probably wouldn’t have seen everything there is to see.
One night my best friend and I were trying to find an English speaking TV channel in our hotel room so we could catch some news. While on a tour like that, we fell into an information void, unaware of anything that was happening in the world.
We finally got a fuzzy, English speaking channel with a guy doing the weather report. We were used to TV weather reporters standing in front of a blue screen, showing maps of the jet stream, clever rain cloud graphics, and high and low pressure systems screaming or stalling across our nation. Not this guy. He was standing in front of a chalk board with the word Weather written across it. His report looked like it was being filmed in his basement.
He said, “Well, we have some weather coming. Big storm coming across the Mediterranean Sea. Lots of clouds and whirly stuff.” Then he made a swirling motion like he was stirring a big pot stew. “Nasty stuff,” he continued. The word “stuff” was used a lot; I had never heard that word used technically in a weather report like this guy was. “Clouds, and rain, and whoosh; stuff like that,” he said. “Could be some snow. But not to worry! It’s only weather!” My friend Jay and I looked at each other and burst out laughing. “It’s only weather!” we said in unison.
“It’s only weather” turned out to be the worst snow storm Jerusalem had seen in 50 years. About a foot of very wet snow shut down the city. Over laden tree branches broke off pulling down power lines. The sound of the popping branches was scary, since we had seen teenagers in Israeli army uniforms driving around all over the city in military jeeps with automatic rifles strapped to their shoulders. The breaking branches sounded like gunfire.
The city was immobilized for the day. What the PLO had tried to do on several occasions to Jerusalem, God did in a one night storm. Brought all the mighty powers to their knees. simply through moving air, and frozen water crystals. “It’s only weather” became our catch phrase for that trip whenever anything bad or upsetting happened.
David, the writer of Psalm 29, must have seen a few of these kinds of storms blow through the country. In the imagery of this Psalm, it isn’t a winter snow storm. It’s a summer thunder storm. A tornado kind of thunder storm. A Greensburg kind of storm. A storm like a gigantic vacuum cleaner that knocks everything down, then sucks it up, leaving a clean strip behind it. Not even things tied down, anchored or rooted withstand that kind of storm.
What’s unsettling about David’s storm imagery is not just the imagery. But what the imagery is describing: God’s Voice. God’s Voice is like that storm. An F5 kind of Voice that is scary and pummeling, and that people get into shelters to hide from. “It’s only weather,” becomes, “It’s only God’s Voice.” And suddenly that which we laugh off becomes scary devastation. We say we want to hear God’s Voice, but we have no idea that what we’re desiring will utterly blow us away if we were to hear it.
The book of Psalms has been called the church’s prayer book. If these Psalms teach us to pray, we need to pay attention to what they teach us about the God to whom we pray. We need to pay attention to what these Psalms teach us about prayer and worship.
What we learn about God from Psalm 29, the God to whom we pray, may be too much for most people.
First, we learn that God is a revealing God. As opposed to the mystery religions and the fertility cults that other tribal people were involved with outside of Israel, the God of Israel wanted to be known. God wants to be understood. God wants relationship with the world and the people of the world. God doesn’t want to stand aloof and apart, like the Greek gods up on Mount Olympus. Our God reveals himself in direct ways.
Usually, God does that in the march of history. When people needed a sense of connection with God in the present moment, they would first look back to times in history, when God revealed himself in some act of salvation. “We remember when you did this, and this and this, O God...Do that again, now!” the people would pray.
In Psalm 29, God reveals himself, reveals his Voice, in acts of nature. One of the characteristics of God that I’ve tried to emphasize in my messages is that God’s speaking is His main activity. When God speaks, when God uses His Voice, things happen. When we speak, a bunch of words come out, but not much happens. Adlai Stevenson once said that the media are the people who separate the wheat from the chaff and then report the chaff. That seems to be what happens most when we speak--a lot of chaff comes out.
Or there’s the story of Thomas Jefferson, who submitted his draft of the Declaration of Independence to some friends for editorial review. Jefferson quickly was getting anxious about all the red marks they were making all over his draft. Benjamin Franklin noticed Jefferson’s anxiety and told him a story.
When he was a young man, Franklin had a friend who had completed an apprenticeship as a hatter. He was ready to open his own business. He wanted a great signboard in front of the shop. He had a design drawn up that showed a picture of a hat, and over the picture it read, “John Thompson, hatter, makes and sells hats for ready money.” He showed some of his friends the design and asked them what they thought.
The first one remarked that “hatter” was unnecessary, since “makes and sells hats” already showed the nature of the business. The second person pointed out that “makes” could be left off the sign, since customers were unlikely to be interested in who made the hats. The third friend said that since it was not the custom to sell on credit, the words “for ready money” were unnecessary. Finally, one of the friends said it seemed unnecessary to have the word “hats” on the sign, since there was the picture of a hat. So the signboard eventually read, “John Thompson” with a picture of a hat under his name.
When Thomas Jefferson heard Franklin’s story, he smiled and let the editors continue their work on his draft of the Declaration of Independence.
As I mentioned in my message a couple of weeks ago, that’s what we do as human beings. We spew out a lot of words, most of which are truly unnecessary and effect nothing. But what we find out about God and God’s Voice is that God’s revelation of himself, through His Voice, always has an effect. God is a God who reveals himself through a Voice, that every time that Voice sounds there is a startling impact.
What is amazing about God’s Voice in this Psalm, though, is that God speaks no words. God’s Voice is just pure sound, like music, or a musical note. God doesn’t utter any commands like in the creation story in Genesis. There is just Voice. Just sound. And look at the results of that Voice: echoes over the ocean roar, destruction of cedar trees, mountains skip and jump, lightning flashes, deserts tremble, forests are stripped bare of their leaves.
This revealing Voice of God, the sound of God, is pure, raw power, like a clear perfect note from a trumpet. Our God is a God with a Voice--a voice of threatening, overwhelming power.
David tells how God’s Voice shatters the cedars. Let’s get a proper picture of what David is saying. You may have seen bunches of those pesky cedar trees growing in pastures as you drive along. Most are Christmas tree sized. If you are thinking that is the kind of cedar tree God is blowing over, you’d be wrong. The cedars of Lebanon David is picturing are up to 130 feet tall. They are 8 feet in diameter. We are talking about mammoth trees that were used to build ships, palaces, and temples. That is the unbelievable power of God’s revealing Voice that David is describing.
In the book, Lion, Witch and the Wardrobe, one of the children asks Mr. Beaver about Aslan the Lion, who is the Christ-figure in the book. One of the children asks if Aslan is safe. The reply (p. 75-76) is well worth considering:
Mr. Beaver replied, “If there's anyone who can appear before Aslan without their knees knocking, they're either braver than me or else just silly.”
“Then he isn't safe?” asked Lucy.
“Safe?” said Mr. Beaver. “Don't you hear what Mrs. Beaver tells you? Who said anything about safe? 'Course he isn't safe. But he's good. He's the King, I tell you.”
That’s what David is telling us about our God in Psalm 29. Our God, and God’s Voice are not safe. God is the King. And as our King, who has a Voice that can shatter mammoth cedar trees, demands our ultimate respect.
That leads to the other thing we learn from this Psalm: authentic worship. As the opening verses of the Psalm say, the best thing we can do is “Honor” and “Acclaim” the glory, power, and the name of the LORD.
God’s name is spoken in this Psalm 18 times in eleven verses. That should tell us something about who this Psalm is about. More importantly, it should give us a clue about what our relationship to the name of God is to be about.
To honor and acclaim someone else is to approach them as the superior. It is to come before them in humility, recognizing there is a gulf between you and them. That gulf in the psalm is called holiness and glory. There is so much holiness emanating from God that our only response is to fall on our face and not look.
God told a number of people in the Old Testament that they could not look at Him and live. The reason is that there is so much holiness and glory about God, that if we looked at God we would see how far from God we are, how tainted we are, how utterly human and unholy we really are. Finally and utterly seeing the difference between ourselves and God would be too much for us. It would kill us. That’s the level of humility with which we need to enter the presence of God in worship. Worship is a humbling experience.
Also, in this Psalm, notice all the energy that is generated by the presence of God. That’s a huge part of what worship is about--putting ourselves in God’s overpowering presence, which then infects us in a positive way with an unbelievable passion and zeal for God.
Worship is not something we do on a horizontal level, from people to people. It’s from God downward, and from us Godward. It is coming into worship expecting something awesome to happen. But not something that is superficial, or that we manufacture. It is the scary tiptoeing into the presence of God who just might, with His Voice, blow…...you…...away.
In her book, Teaching a Stone To Talk, Annie Dillard wrote:
Why do people in churches seem like cheerful, brainless tourists on a packaged tour of the Almighty?… Does anyone have the foggiest idea what sort of power we so blithely invoke?… It is madness to wear ladies straw hats and velvet hats to church; we should all be wearing crash helmets. Ushers should issue life preservers and signal flares; they should lash us to our pews. (page 40)
Worship is about tiptoeing into the presence of God, trembling for dear life, requesting to hear the Voice of God, while all the time realizing that if that request were granted, and a sound came out of the Voice of God there is the chance we would be shattered, moved like a mountain, or stripped bare of everything that we thought we were, all that we surrounded ourselves with for protection.
Worship is the act of falling on our faces, realizing our God is an awesome God, a fearful God, with a powerful sounding Voice. And the best way to worship that God is to honor Him as God, and give God glory with everything we do and say.
Monday, December 24, 2012
Visions Of Angels, 4
"Visions Of Angels" (part 4)
Luke 2:8-18
Why were the shepherds afraid? What was it that they thought they saw? These may sound like stupid questions, but I’m not so sure. There was a belief at that time that the spirits of the dead hovered around for a time after their death. These spirits were called shades. The shades of the dead had the power to inflict harm on living human beings, especially if the shade was a neglected or abused family member. Or, if the shade was of someone who was not given the last rites of a proper burial, they would stick around for a time and be generally obnoxious to living family members and friends. Did the shepherds think they were seeing the shade of some deceased family member, come back to disturb them, and that’s why they were afraid?
Or, did the shepherds think they had come face-to-face with God? If they were faithful Jews (which shepherds usually weren’t), they would have known that no one can look upon the face of God and live. At least, that’s what God told Moses. Is that why they were afraid, because they thought they were seeing God, and were about to lose their lives because they dared look?
Or, did they really know they were being visited by an angel? The suddenness of it all just caught them off guard? It had to be a startling experience, to see whatever it was they thought they were seeing. It was dark. All of a sudden they were surrounded by bright light. Singing voices. And a mysterious message about a Savior baby being born. Would it be the unexpected appearing of the angel that was most shocking to those shepherds on the hillside that night? That kind of dramatic suddenness certainly could be very unsettling.
It’s kind of like the story about the guy who was walking through the cemetery one night. He fell into an open grave. Try as he may, he couldn’t get out. He just sat down in a dark corner of the hole waiting for morning when the workmen would come back and get him out. Well, lo and behold, another guy came along and fell in the same hole. He also tried, unsuccessfully, to get out. From a dark corner of the grave came a voice, “You’ll never get out of here.” But he did.
I would assume that it was that same kind of fright that the shepherds must have been feeling at such an unexpected appearance.
“Fear not.” As I mentioned at the outset of this series, time and time again that message had to be spoken to disciples with shaking knees. When Jesus came walking across the water, the disciples thought they were seeing a ghost. Jesus said to them, “Don’t be afraid.”
When the women came to the tomb where Jesus was laid and found an angel there, they were told, “Fear not.” Evidently that didn’t help much because they eventually met the Risen Lord, and he told them the same thing, “Do not be afraid.”
And right after the time when Jesus’ appearance was changed in the Transfiguration on the mountain top, and he met with Elijah and Moses in that shower of light, Jesus had to come to his disciples, who were praying for their lives, and tell them not to fear.
Isn’t it a strange twist that at the most mysteriously holy events, when God makes himself present and visible in such intentional ways, without any attempt at concealment, the singular reaction is fear? It must be a characteristic of our humanness that we have become afraid of heavenly messengers.
“Fear not: Good News!” In the Scriptures, Good News always meets fear. The problem is we concentrate too much on the fear, and miss the Good News. We understand the fear part, all too well. A teacher in Harlem thought it might be a good idea to take his city kids out to the country for a weekend at camp. One of the first activities they organized was a baseball game.
But nobody wanted to play in the outfield. The teacher found out the reason: The outfield butted up to the edge of the woods where all sorts of assumed danger waited to pounce on the children. So the teacher put two kids in each position in the outfield. One was to play the position; the other was to watch the woods. And the game went on.
When the disciples saw Jesus walking on the water, he followed his “fear not,” with the Good News, “It is I.” When the women were met by the angles at the empty tomb, their “fear not,” was followed by the Good News, “He is risen!” And to the startled shepherds watching their flocks, the angel’s “Fear not,” was followed with the Good News that “...a Savior has come!”
Notice that the Good News of the angel to the shepherds has a double emphasis. The angel first told them, “I am bringing you good news...” The angel first singles out the shepherds as the recipients of the Good News. Here is the personal approach of God’s Good News. It is not, first, just some mass dose, generic Good News, splashed across the internet for anyone to read. Instead, the Good News comes to individuals, fitting their own special needs and the place they are in.
(pause) Her small voice penetrated the stillness of the night. It came from the bedroom across the hall: “Daddy, I’m scared.”
Out of his groggy, fuzzy sleep state, the father responds, “Honey, don’t be afraid; Daddy’s right across the hall.”
After a brief pause her little voice is heard again, “I’m still scared.”
Always with a quick insight, the father responds, “You don’t need to be afraid--God is with you.”
This time the pause was longer, but the voice returns, “I don’t care about God, Daddy; I want someone with skin.”
The Good News, spoken first particularly to the shepherds is that God has come as someone with skin--an ordinary person--so that, as the person Jesus, he knows where we have needs, touching our fears and loneliness with compassion. Good News! The Savior has come--just for you! “I’m bring YOU Good News...” says the angel.
But that’s not all. The Good News doesn’t come and end just with the shepherds. The second emphasis of the angel’s message is that the Good News will also be “...to all the people.” The Good News has to start somewhere, with someone. The little group of shepherds were the beginning point from which the Good News is then broadcasted outward like seed upon the land.
In his book, Lord Of All Life, Ian Burnett tells that James the Fifth of Scotland would, on occasion, lay aside the royal robe of being king and put on the simple clothes of a peasant. In such a disguise he was able to move freely throughout the people, making friends with ordinary folks, entering in their particular difficulties, appreciating their handicaps, sympathizing with them in their sorrows. When he returned to be king again, sitting upon the throne, he was better able to rule with compassion and mercy to all the people.
The second emphasis of the angel’s message of Good News is that God has sent an everyday king to deal with the fear of all people, in all places and at all times. His work of being King is not only for us individually, but will also affect the whole world. As God in the flesh first touches the lives of a small number of people, so those who have been touched by him will also pass on that touch to others.
To hear and respond to the “Fear Not: Good News!” of the angel’s message means also responding to a mandate that shines through that Good News. The Good News is a beacon light to:
...care about human problems that most people ignore.
...speak up for the downtrodden who are powerless to speak for themselves.
...call for forgiveness and compassion when others call for blood.
...give of ourselves without asking, “What’s in it for me?”
...be loyal to the Good News of God when others have sold out to the idols, flim-flam, and narcissism of our present day world.
The Good News of the coming Savior must cause us to do something. To react in some way. Otherwise it can never be Good. It can only be News. Had the shepherds reacted with ho-hum indifference to the message of the angel--which was a choice available to them--all the wonder, excitement, and joy that has become part of Christmas would have been lost.
In the early 1900’s, Alexander Woolcott described a scene he had witnessed in a New York hospital. It was around Christmas time. A grief-stricken mother was sitting in the hospital lounge in stunned silence, tears streaming down her face. She had just lost her only child in the flu epidemic that was searing its way across our country. She was gazing blindly into nowhere while the head nurse was trying desperately to console her. The nurse was not making much of an impact until she saw someone who might help.
“Mrs. Norris, did you notice the shabby little boy cooling his heals in the hall next to your daughter’s room?” asked the nurse.
No, Mrs. Norris hadn’t noticed him.
“There...” continued the nurse, “...there is a case. That little boy’s mother is a young French woman who was brought in a week ago by ambulance from their run down one-room apartment. They had immigrated scarcely three months ago. They had lost all their family back in France and they knew nobody here. The two had only each other. Every day that boy has sat there in the hopes that she would awaken and speak to him.”
Mrs. Norris was listening now. So the nurse went on. “Twenty minutes ago that little mother died. She dropped off like a pebble in the boundless ocean. Now it is my duty to go out and tell that little fellow that, at the age of seven, he is all alone in the world. That he now has no one and no home.” The head nurse paused, then said, “I don’t suppose...I don’t suppose that you would go out and tell him with me?”
What happened in the next few moments, wrote Alexander Woolcott, was something that you remember forever. Mrs. Norris stood up, dried her tears, went out to the hall, across from the room where her daughter had just died, put her arms around the boy, and led the homeless child off to her childless home. In their sadness and fear, and at a time of each other’s greatest loss, they had become a source of joy and Good News to each other.
Can you imagine such a message--the Good News--being lost on dead ears? Can you imagine such a visitation being lost on bah-humbugness? Can you imagine anyone who would not want to jump to their feet at such a message and start running, telling everyone who was met along the way what the angels said? Can you imagine anyone, who once accepted the Good News, but then refused, in any way, to spread that Good News around?
One time when I went up to San Francisco, when I was living in San Jose, I saw a store-front funeral parlor. Only in San Francisco could you see something like this. The front windows were covered with sun-bleached, beige colored curtains, that were probably some other color at one time. In front of the curtains was a sign that read, “SPECIAL: If you are walking around half dead, we will bury you for half price.” I don’t know how many people took up the offer.
The fact is, the sign described some people very well. There are those whose half-dead side is making decisions for their half-alive side. The Good News is that the dead can be made alive, rather than the the other way around. The Savior has come to bring life, not death. He has come to lift us to our feet, from being kept down and nearly half-dead by our fear for so long.
That is the message of joy. Of infectious joy. Of, as the angel told the shepherds, a message that is “great and joyful.”
Is the angel’s message of Good News really a great joy? Or is it not? If it is not, then maybe we should be afraid, and see no hope in ever being relieved of that fear. If it is not, then maybe we Christians, as Paul once wrote, are most to be pitied. Maybe we should just give in to our tears and walk around half dead, and let that half etch its expression on our half alive faces. If it is not a great joy, then we should just take all the decorations down, and plug our ears to all the singing that’s going on around us. If it is not a truly great joy, then let us forget about any ideas we might have of Jesus being a Savior. Let us forget about the possibility of experiencing God’s Good News and grace. Of ever finding new hope for this life. If the Good News is not really a “great joy,” then nothing is great.
“Fear not: Good News!” The Savior has come! May we find life and “great joy” in this Good News. Let that Good News blaze forth upon us like an angelic starry night, and then radiating, run out to all the world.
Luke 2:8-18
Why were the shepherds afraid? What was it that they thought they saw? These may sound like stupid questions, but I’m not so sure. There was a belief at that time that the spirits of the dead hovered around for a time after their death. These spirits were called shades. The shades of the dead had the power to inflict harm on living human beings, especially if the shade was a neglected or abused family member. Or, if the shade was of someone who was not given the last rites of a proper burial, they would stick around for a time and be generally obnoxious to living family members and friends. Did the shepherds think they were seeing the shade of some deceased family member, come back to disturb them, and that’s why they were afraid?
Or, did the shepherds think they had come face-to-face with God? If they were faithful Jews (which shepherds usually weren’t), they would have known that no one can look upon the face of God and live. At least, that’s what God told Moses. Is that why they were afraid, because they thought they were seeing God, and were about to lose their lives because they dared look?
Or, did they really know they were being visited by an angel? The suddenness of it all just caught them off guard? It had to be a startling experience, to see whatever it was they thought they were seeing. It was dark. All of a sudden they were surrounded by bright light. Singing voices. And a mysterious message about a Savior baby being born. Would it be the unexpected appearing of the angel that was most shocking to those shepherds on the hillside that night? That kind of dramatic suddenness certainly could be very unsettling.
It’s kind of like the story about the guy who was walking through the cemetery one night. He fell into an open grave. Try as he may, he couldn’t get out. He just sat down in a dark corner of the hole waiting for morning when the workmen would come back and get him out. Well, lo and behold, another guy came along and fell in the same hole. He also tried, unsuccessfully, to get out. From a dark corner of the grave came a voice, “You’ll never get out of here.” But he did.
I would assume that it was that same kind of fright that the shepherds must have been feeling at such an unexpected appearance.
II
“Fear not.” As I mentioned at the outset of this series, time and time again that message had to be spoken to disciples with shaking knees. When Jesus came walking across the water, the disciples thought they were seeing a ghost. Jesus said to them, “Don’t be afraid.”
When the women came to the tomb where Jesus was laid and found an angel there, they were told, “Fear not.” Evidently that didn’t help much because they eventually met the Risen Lord, and he told them the same thing, “Do not be afraid.”
And right after the time when Jesus’ appearance was changed in the Transfiguration on the mountain top, and he met with Elijah and Moses in that shower of light, Jesus had to come to his disciples, who were praying for their lives, and tell them not to fear.
Isn’t it a strange twist that at the most mysteriously holy events, when God makes himself present and visible in such intentional ways, without any attempt at concealment, the singular reaction is fear? It must be a characteristic of our humanness that we have become afraid of heavenly messengers.
“Fear not: Good News!” In the Scriptures, Good News always meets fear. The problem is we concentrate too much on the fear, and miss the Good News. We understand the fear part, all too well. A teacher in Harlem thought it might be a good idea to take his city kids out to the country for a weekend at camp. One of the first activities they organized was a baseball game.
But nobody wanted to play in the outfield. The teacher found out the reason: The outfield butted up to the edge of the woods where all sorts of assumed danger waited to pounce on the children. So the teacher put two kids in each position in the outfield. One was to play the position; the other was to watch the woods. And the game went on.
When the disciples saw Jesus walking on the water, he followed his “fear not,” with the Good News, “It is I.” When the women were met by the angles at the empty tomb, their “fear not,” was followed by the Good News, “He is risen!” And to the startled shepherds watching their flocks, the angel’s “Fear not,” was followed with the Good News that “...a Savior has come!”
III
Notice that the Good News of the angel to the shepherds has a double emphasis. The angel first told them, “I am bringing you good news...” The angel first singles out the shepherds as the recipients of the Good News. Here is the personal approach of God’s Good News. It is not, first, just some mass dose, generic Good News, splashed across the internet for anyone to read. Instead, the Good News comes to individuals, fitting their own special needs and the place they are in.
(pause) Her small voice penetrated the stillness of the night. It came from the bedroom across the hall: “Daddy, I’m scared.”
Out of his groggy, fuzzy sleep state, the father responds, “Honey, don’t be afraid; Daddy’s right across the hall.”
After a brief pause her little voice is heard again, “I’m still scared.”
Always with a quick insight, the father responds, “You don’t need to be afraid--God is with you.”
This time the pause was longer, but the voice returns, “I don’t care about God, Daddy; I want someone with skin.”
The Good News, spoken first particularly to the shepherds is that God has come as someone with skin--an ordinary person--so that, as the person Jesus, he knows where we have needs, touching our fears and loneliness with compassion. Good News! The Savior has come--just for you! “I’m bring YOU Good News...” says the angel.
But that’s not all. The Good News doesn’t come and end just with the shepherds. The second emphasis of the angel’s message is that the Good News will also be “...to all the people.” The Good News has to start somewhere, with someone. The little group of shepherds were the beginning point from which the Good News is then broadcasted outward like seed upon the land.
In his book, Lord Of All Life, Ian Burnett tells that James the Fifth of Scotland would, on occasion, lay aside the royal robe of being king and put on the simple clothes of a peasant. In such a disguise he was able to move freely throughout the people, making friends with ordinary folks, entering in their particular difficulties, appreciating their handicaps, sympathizing with them in their sorrows. When he returned to be king again, sitting upon the throne, he was better able to rule with compassion and mercy to all the people.
The second emphasis of the angel’s message of Good News is that God has sent an everyday king to deal with the fear of all people, in all places and at all times. His work of being King is not only for us individually, but will also affect the whole world. As God in the flesh first touches the lives of a small number of people, so those who have been touched by him will also pass on that touch to others.
To hear and respond to the “Fear Not: Good News!” of the angel’s message means also responding to a mandate that shines through that Good News. The Good News is a beacon light to:
...care about human problems that most people ignore.
...speak up for the downtrodden who are powerless to speak for themselves.
...call for forgiveness and compassion when others call for blood.
...give of ourselves without asking, “What’s in it for me?”
...be loyal to the Good News of God when others have sold out to the idols, flim-flam, and narcissism of our present day world.
The Good News of the coming Savior must cause us to do something. To react in some way. Otherwise it can never be Good. It can only be News. Had the shepherds reacted with ho-hum indifference to the message of the angel--which was a choice available to them--all the wonder, excitement, and joy that has become part of Christmas would have been lost.
In the early 1900’s, Alexander Woolcott described a scene he had witnessed in a New York hospital. It was around Christmas time. A grief-stricken mother was sitting in the hospital lounge in stunned silence, tears streaming down her face. She had just lost her only child in the flu epidemic that was searing its way across our country. She was gazing blindly into nowhere while the head nurse was trying desperately to console her. The nurse was not making much of an impact until she saw someone who might help.
“Mrs. Norris, did you notice the shabby little boy cooling his heals in the hall next to your daughter’s room?” asked the nurse.
No, Mrs. Norris hadn’t noticed him.
“There...” continued the nurse, “...there is a case. That little boy’s mother is a young French woman who was brought in a week ago by ambulance from their run down one-room apartment. They had immigrated scarcely three months ago. They had lost all their family back in France and they knew nobody here. The two had only each other. Every day that boy has sat there in the hopes that she would awaken and speak to him.”
Mrs. Norris was listening now. So the nurse went on. “Twenty minutes ago that little mother died. She dropped off like a pebble in the boundless ocean. Now it is my duty to go out and tell that little fellow that, at the age of seven, he is all alone in the world. That he now has no one and no home.” The head nurse paused, then said, “I don’t suppose...I don’t suppose that you would go out and tell him with me?”
What happened in the next few moments, wrote Alexander Woolcott, was something that you remember forever. Mrs. Norris stood up, dried her tears, went out to the hall, across from the room where her daughter had just died, put her arms around the boy, and led the homeless child off to her childless home. In their sadness and fear, and at a time of each other’s greatest loss, they had become a source of joy and Good News to each other.
Can you imagine such a message--the Good News--being lost on dead ears? Can you imagine such a visitation being lost on bah-humbugness? Can you imagine anyone who would not want to jump to their feet at such a message and start running, telling everyone who was met along the way what the angels said? Can you imagine anyone, who once accepted the Good News, but then refused, in any way, to spread that Good News around?
One time when I went up to San Francisco, when I was living in San Jose, I saw a store-front funeral parlor. Only in San Francisco could you see something like this. The front windows were covered with sun-bleached, beige colored curtains, that were probably some other color at one time. In front of the curtains was a sign that read, “SPECIAL: If you are walking around half dead, we will bury you for half price.” I don’t know how many people took up the offer.
The fact is, the sign described some people very well. There are those whose half-dead side is making decisions for their half-alive side. The Good News is that the dead can be made alive, rather than the the other way around. The Savior has come to bring life, not death. He has come to lift us to our feet, from being kept down and nearly half-dead by our fear for so long.
IV
That is the message of joy. Of infectious joy. Of, as the angel told the shepherds, a message that is “great and joyful.”
Is the angel’s message of Good News really a great joy? Or is it not? If it is not, then maybe we should be afraid, and see no hope in ever being relieved of that fear. If it is not, then maybe we Christians, as Paul once wrote, are most to be pitied. Maybe we should just give in to our tears and walk around half dead, and let that half etch its expression on our half alive faces. If it is not a great joy, then we should just take all the decorations down, and plug our ears to all the singing that’s going on around us. If it is not a truly great joy, then let us forget about any ideas we might have of Jesus being a Savior. Let us forget about the possibility of experiencing God’s Good News and grace. Of ever finding new hope for this life. If the Good News is not really a “great joy,” then nothing is great.
“Fear not: Good News!” The Savior has come! May we find life and “great joy” in this Good News. Let that Good News blaze forth upon us like an angelic starry night, and then radiating, run out to all the world.
Monday, December 17, 2012
Newtown School Shooting
Thoughts about Newtown, Connecticut School Shooting
Genesis 1:1-2 (MSG). "First this: God created the Heavens and Earth--all you see, all you don't see. Earth was a soup of nothingness, a bottomless emptiness, an inky darkness. God's Spirit brooded...above the...abyss."
I think about that description a lot when we are confronted with an event like the shooting of innocents in Newtown. I think about the world before God. A chaotic and disturbing world. A world where there is nothing by which you can get your bearings. A world where there is nothing solid upon which to stand. A world where God has not yet arrived.
God is brooding, but has not acted. God looms over the chaos, but has not yet landed in it. God is over-shadowing the darkness, but the darkness doesn't even notice or care.
Then God stops brooding. God speaks and everything changes.
What is troubling is that the order God brings to the chaos doesn't subdue that chaos. All the levels of order that were created by God weren't ironclad.
History becomes an ongoing story of how the chaos keeps leaking out, and God must brood again. God must hover, and then speak in order to recreate order. Fill the emptiness, again. Shine light in the darkness, again. Make something out of nothing, again. Give the world a solid place to stand, again.
That's what Advent waiting is all about. It's that certain understanding that the world is going to hell in a hand-basket, again; that God is brooding over chaos, again; and we wait, crying out to God, "How long?"
Finally God speaks, but not like we expect. Not with a booming, "Let there be light," but a whisper that says, "Let there be a baby. And let that baby be me." A most mysterious utterance. God is going to finally and utterly land in our chaotic world. Maybe now, with the birth of Emmanuel--God with us--the chaos will be completely overcome. Our prayers, and maybe even God's prayers, will finally be answered.
But even because of God's entrance into the world, in the baby Jesus, the darkness still has it's day through a man named Herod, who has all the innocent, two-year-old baby boys senselessly slaughtered in a deranged effort to secure his place in the crazy, swirling emptiness. Even with God birthed into our world, the chaos is not stilled. Did God realize that simply by enacting His plan of coming into the world, it would cause such a deadly backlash to a town and its two-year-old baby boys?
So we have been saved, by Jesus Christ. But the chaos is still not completely contained. Friday it popped out again. Evil had yet another field day, mostly upon innocent, happy, once alive five and six year old children. The incongruity of the powerlessness of five-year-old children, cringing before the empty-headed power of evil behind a gun almost slays us, who try to comprehend that gap. One moment they were alive; the next dead. How quickly eruptive chaos can make us question, and even despair: will this pre-God world ever change?
Theologians call this the "yet/not yet" of God. That "yet" God has acted and is acting, and will act upon the chaos, it is "not yet" over. The final subjection of evil has "not yet" happened. God has "not yet" finished the work He began at creation. "Yet," there will be a day. There will come a day when all emptiness will be filled with God, all nothingness will disappear in the substance of God, all darkness--even the corners--will be fully illuminated with the light that is God, and all that is bottomless will become the solid rock of God.
As the end of the book of Revelation says:
"Now God's home is with his people! He will live with them, and he will be their God. He will wipe away all tears from their eyes. There will be no more death, no more grief or crying or pain."
With the martyred innocents who crowd around the altar of God in heaven, we add our prayers with theirs, "How long?"
Visions Of Angels, 3
"Visions Of Angels" (part 3)
Matthew 1:18-25
I’m going to attempt to be a psychological sleuth this morning. In other words, I’m going to try and get inside someone else’s head. No, don’t worry; it isn’t anybody here. It’s someone from the Bible. Namely Joseph. I’m going to try and figure out what Joseph, almost husband of Mary, was thinking when he was deciding to break off his wedding plans with Mary.
It’s a dangerous and foolish task to try to figure out what someone else is thinking. Just ask your husband or wife. The minute you think you know for sure is the minute you don’t know for sure. It’s easy to make assumptions. And it’s just as easy to be grossly misled by those same assumptions. Then all of a sudden you’re in trouble. Like this guy:
The only person who really knows what’s going on is the person whose head is being examined. Unless you’re the guy in this cartoon:
To attempt getting inside another person’s head with a person like Joseph who is separated by 2000 years, 4000 miles, and vastly different cultures away, is even more laughable. Especially when the only historical record we have of Joseph is 12 sentences long. So despite any disclaimers and rationalizations of what a foolish thing I’m about to do, I’m going to do it anyway. My imagination often short circuits my reason. Why shouldn’t it do the same while preaching?
My perspective about Joseph shifted this week. I have always assumed that Joseph never really bought Mary’s story about an angel’s visit. I mean, come on. What self-respecting guy is going to believe that the woman you are engaged to was impregnated by the voice of God? Guys know how pregnancy happens, and it isn’t by voices.
And Joseph certainly knew it wasn’t his child because he and Mary had never, well, you know. Sometimes the Palestinian culture allowed espoused couples to sleep together before marriage was officially celebrated. But Mary was from Galilee. Galilee was the “Bible Belt” of Palestine. It was the stronghold of the religious right in the country. They didn’t allow anything like that in Galilee. So Joseph knew it couldn’t be his kid that Mary was carrying. It had to be another man. That’s the only logical assumption Joseph could have made. I have always thought, then, that Joseph thought Mary’s explanation was a bunch of hooey.
But there’s a problem. Why did Joseph try to call off the marriage quietly? Matthew says Joseph was a “man who always did the right thing.” Well, if Joseph really believed Mary was carrying the child of another man, the “right thing” would have been to have her stoned to death. After all, what is right is always right. That’s the “right” penalty for someone caught in adultery. Even though they weren’t married, cheating on an espoused mate was adultery just the same. Why does Joseph, according to Matthew’s gospel, not want to “embarrass Mary in front of everyone” even though she has brought embarrassment and shame upon him and his family?
For a long time I have thought that the reason behind Joseph’s actions was that he really loved Mary. That there are two right things to do here. The right thing would have been to have Mary stoned, justice-wise. But also the right thing would be to go easy on her, love-wise. That’s the conclusion we came to this past Monday night as we were talking about Joseph at our Christmas Stories discussion group.
Yet, the more I thought about it, even that’s a tough assumption to make. All marriages, at that time, were arranged by the parents of the young man and woman. The future husband and wife really had nothing to say in the matter. Joseph and Mary’s marriage was probably arranged when they were children, or near the time of their marriage. It was more a financial transaction, between two sets of parents, that had very little to do with love. The bride and groom hardly ever saw each other until the day of the wedding.
Did Joseph know Mary prior to their arranged marriage? It’s not clear. Were they even from the same town? That’s not clear, but has always been assumed. The story doesn’t say one way or the other. But when Joseph had to register for the census, he and Mary had to go to his family’s home town, which was Bethlehem. So was Joseph from Bethlehem, and was only a visitor to Nazareth? Or maybe had extended family in Nazareth, and that’s how he and Mary were brought together? It’s not known.
So that’s the possible problem with my assumption. The proverbial fly in the ointment. What if Joseph doesn’t love Mary? What if love has nothing to do with his motivation to put this marriage aside quietly? Maybe that’s just our modern day romanticism talking more than 1st century, Middle Eastern reality.
So back to the question: Why doesn’t Joseph exercise his legal rights and have her stoned to death? There’s got to be something else going on here, in Joseph’s head. What is it? What is he possibly thinking?
While I was thinking about this an angel appeared to me...just kidding. But I did have one of those, “What if…” insights. And these “What if…” insights usually lead me to one of what I call, “Wing’s Hair-Brained Ideas.”
Here it is: What if Joseph believed Mary’s story of an angelic visit and being impregnated by the voice of God? Remember, this has all happened BEFORE Joseph saw the angel in his dream. So nothing is confirmed or discounted for him at that point. Joseph has simply decided to end the marriage, but do it quietly so as not to embarrass Mary. Is he doing all that because he believes her story?
Let’s assume for a moment that Joseph believed she was visited by an angel. He believed that the Spirit of God had spoken a creative word, like during creation, and she became pregnant. He believed that she was going to have a special child--a child formed “unnaturally.”
If that assumption is true, then maybe Joseph knew Mary. If Joseph actually was from Nazareth, then he might have had an idea about Mary’s character. If he knew her character, and she was like the Biblical record portrayed her, then he would have known she was a devout and pure person. If that’s true, then it would have made her explanation even more possible and plausible in Joseph’s mind. There are some people we know we’d believe, even if they told us a wild-hair story, just because of the depth of their character. Is that what’s going on in Joseph’s head?
If so, then I’m still stuck. If Joseph believes Mary, or believes her story, or both, then why is he still deciding to quietly call off the wedding? Why won’t he go along with the pregnancy, just say it’s his child, and stand by Mary’s side? He does that eventually. But it takes an angel in a dream to get him to do that. Why doesn’t he come to that point on his own? What is he thinking?
So here comes my giant leap into the unknown mind of Joseph. Are you ready for this one?
Let me start out by asking a question. If you were a young couple, and your fiancé or new bride became immediately pregnant, and then you found out this baby was going to be a special child of some sort, what would go through your head?
There are some parents, who because of their age or because of some pre-existing medical condition, have an amniocentesis test. Doctors can tell a lot from the amniotic fluid that the embryo floats in. Let’s say the doctor discovers your child will have Downs Syndrome, or will be physically handicapped. All of a sudden you’re faced with being a different kind of parent. A parent who will need great strength and patience and love and endurance. Granted, just being a “normal” parent (whatever normal is) takes all of those qualities. But it seems to me, from the parents I know with special needs children, they have faced a parenting of a different quality.
If you were a young parent-to-be, and you found out you would be having a special needs child, what would go through your mind? Wouldn’t there be questions like, “Can I handle this?” “Am I up to this?” I would guess financial questions come to the surface later. I would guess emotional questions and fears rise first and fastest.
Now, let’s insert Joseph into that scheme of things. If he believes Mary’s story, are some of the same thoughts and questions going through his head? Is he wondering:
If this is a child born of God, conceived of in a miraculous way, what does that mean for me?
How am I going to be handle this child?
If I don’t totally understand how this child came to be, how am I going to ever understand the child when he is born, and grows?
Am I equipped to handle this child and this situation?
If Joseph feels he’s unable to cope with a God-child he can use the whole hubbub of Mary’s pregnancy for a smoke screen for his own anxiety and insecurity. He doesn’t mind the thought of being married. He just isn’t sure he can handle being a father of a mystery child who has God mixed up in the whole process.
So he has a way to take care of the whole mess from his standpoint: simply ending the marriage plans quietly. It lets Mary off the hook. And more importantly for him, it lets him off the hook. He protects the special child by breaking off the arrangement, rather than having her stoned, which would kill the child as well. Joseph may have decided, until the angel comes in his dream, that Jesus was just going to be too much for him to handle.
And here’s the personal angle to that question: Is Jesus too much for us to handle as well? Joseph wanted to be a spiritual man. He just didn’t want to be THAT spiritual. When we first become Christians, we may be initially excited about our believing. But then we really run into Jesus. We face all that Jesus is going to demand of our lives. We begin to, alarmingly, realize what it all means to be a Christian. We begin to ask ourselves questions like: Am I strong enough to handle this? Do I have what it takes to really live the Christian life? It’s going to take a lot of strength, and patience, and love, and forgiveness, and endurance. Am I up to it? Or should I look for some way to quietly back away from Jesus? Or, How can I make it look like I’m onboard, but I just can’t live up to all the discipline a real relationship with Jesus will ask of me?
The Christ child will ultimately be more than any of us want to handle. The Christ-man, Jesus, will become even more so. The angel’s task with Joseph is to reassure him he can do it. He can live up to the task of being Mary’s husband and Jesus’ earthly father. It must have worked, because Joseph got right up, after the dream, and did what the angel told him to do.
Maybe, for ourselves, we also need that angelic visitation to reassure us that we can do this. We can be people of faith. We can accept Christ into our lives, believe in him and shoulder all the demands and changes that will be asked of us.
This Christmas, we not only pray for the coming of the Christ-child. We also pray, at the same time, for the angel, who will strengthen us to face Jesus, and the birth of our belief in him.
Matthew 1:18-25
I’m going to attempt to be a psychological sleuth this morning. In other words, I’m going to try and get inside someone else’s head. No, don’t worry; it isn’t anybody here. It’s someone from the Bible. Namely Joseph. I’m going to try and figure out what Joseph, almost husband of Mary, was thinking when he was deciding to break off his wedding plans with Mary.
It’s a dangerous and foolish task to try to figure out what someone else is thinking. Just ask your husband or wife. The minute you think you know for sure is the minute you don’t know for sure. It’s easy to make assumptions. And it’s just as easy to be grossly misled by those same assumptions. Then all of a sudden you’re in trouble. Like this guy:
The only person who really knows what’s going on is the person whose head is being examined. Unless you’re the guy in this cartoon:
To attempt getting inside another person’s head with a person like Joseph who is separated by 2000 years, 4000 miles, and vastly different cultures away, is even more laughable. Especially when the only historical record we have of Joseph is 12 sentences long. So despite any disclaimers and rationalizations of what a foolish thing I’m about to do, I’m going to do it anyway. My imagination often short circuits my reason. Why shouldn’t it do the same while preaching?
My perspective about Joseph shifted this week. I have always assumed that Joseph never really bought Mary’s story about an angel’s visit. I mean, come on. What self-respecting guy is going to believe that the woman you are engaged to was impregnated by the voice of God? Guys know how pregnancy happens, and it isn’t by voices.
And Joseph certainly knew it wasn’t his child because he and Mary had never, well, you know. Sometimes the Palestinian culture allowed espoused couples to sleep together before marriage was officially celebrated. But Mary was from Galilee. Galilee was the “Bible Belt” of Palestine. It was the stronghold of the religious right in the country. They didn’t allow anything like that in Galilee. So Joseph knew it couldn’t be his kid that Mary was carrying. It had to be another man. That’s the only logical assumption Joseph could have made. I have always thought, then, that Joseph thought Mary’s explanation was a bunch of hooey.
But there’s a problem. Why did Joseph try to call off the marriage quietly? Matthew says Joseph was a “man who always did the right thing.” Well, if Joseph really believed Mary was carrying the child of another man, the “right thing” would have been to have her stoned to death. After all, what is right is always right. That’s the “right” penalty for someone caught in adultery. Even though they weren’t married, cheating on an espoused mate was adultery just the same. Why does Joseph, according to Matthew’s gospel, not want to “embarrass Mary in front of everyone” even though she has brought embarrassment and shame upon him and his family?
For a long time I have thought that the reason behind Joseph’s actions was that he really loved Mary. That there are two right things to do here. The right thing would have been to have Mary stoned, justice-wise. But also the right thing would be to go easy on her, love-wise. That’s the conclusion we came to this past Monday night as we were talking about Joseph at our Christmas Stories discussion group.
Yet, the more I thought about it, even that’s a tough assumption to make. All marriages, at that time, were arranged by the parents of the young man and woman. The future husband and wife really had nothing to say in the matter. Joseph and Mary’s marriage was probably arranged when they were children, or near the time of their marriage. It was more a financial transaction, between two sets of parents, that had very little to do with love. The bride and groom hardly ever saw each other until the day of the wedding.
Did Joseph know Mary prior to their arranged marriage? It’s not clear. Were they even from the same town? That’s not clear, but has always been assumed. The story doesn’t say one way or the other. But when Joseph had to register for the census, he and Mary had to go to his family’s home town, which was Bethlehem. So was Joseph from Bethlehem, and was only a visitor to Nazareth? Or maybe had extended family in Nazareth, and that’s how he and Mary were brought together? It’s not known.
So that’s the possible problem with my assumption. The proverbial fly in the ointment. What if Joseph doesn’t love Mary? What if love has nothing to do with his motivation to put this marriage aside quietly? Maybe that’s just our modern day romanticism talking more than 1st century, Middle Eastern reality.
So back to the question: Why doesn’t Joseph exercise his legal rights and have her stoned to death? There’s got to be something else going on here, in Joseph’s head. What is it? What is he possibly thinking?
While I was thinking about this an angel appeared to me...just kidding. But I did have one of those, “What if…” insights. And these “What if…” insights usually lead me to one of what I call, “Wing’s Hair-Brained Ideas.”
Here it is: What if Joseph believed Mary’s story of an angelic visit and being impregnated by the voice of God? Remember, this has all happened BEFORE Joseph saw the angel in his dream. So nothing is confirmed or discounted for him at that point. Joseph has simply decided to end the marriage, but do it quietly so as not to embarrass Mary. Is he doing all that because he believes her story?
Let’s assume for a moment that Joseph believed she was visited by an angel. He believed that the Spirit of God had spoken a creative word, like during creation, and she became pregnant. He believed that she was going to have a special child--a child formed “unnaturally.”
If that assumption is true, then maybe Joseph knew Mary. If Joseph actually was from Nazareth, then he might have had an idea about Mary’s character. If he knew her character, and she was like the Biblical record portrayed her, then he would have known she was a devout and pure person. If that’s true, then it would have made her explanation even more possible and plausible in Joseph’s mind. There are some people we know we’d believe, even if they told us a wild-hair story, just because of the depth of their character. Is that what’s going on in Joseph’s head?
If so, then I’m still stuck. If Joseph believes Mary, or believes her story, or both, then why is he still deciding to quietly call off the wedding? Why won’t he go along with the pregnancy, just say it’s his child, and stand by Mary’s side? He does that eventually. But it takes an angel in a dream to get him to do that. Why doesn’t he come to that point on his own? What is he thinking?
So here comes my giant leap into the unknown mind of Joseph. Are you ready for this one?
Let me start out by asking a question. If you were a young couple, and your fiancé or new bride became immediately pregnant, and then you found out this baby was going to be a special child of some sort, what would go through your head?
There are some parents, who because of their age or because of some pre-existing medical condition, have an amniocentesis test. Doctors can tell a lot from the amniotic fluid that the embryo floats in. Let’s say the doctor discovers your child will have Downs Syndrome, or will be physically handicapped. All of a sudden you’re faced with being a different kind of parent. A parent who will need great strength and patience and love and endurance. Granted, just being a “normal” parent (whatever normal is) takes all of those qualities. But it seems to me, from the parents I know with special needs children, they have faced a parenting of a different quality.
If you were a young parent-to-be, and you found out you would be having a special needs child, what would go through your mind? Wouldn’t there be questions like, “Can I handle this?” “Am I up to this?” I would guess financial questions come to the surface later. I would guess emotional questions and fears rise first and fastest.
Now, let’s insert Joseph into that scheme of things. If he believes Mary’s story, are some of the same thoughts and questions going through his head? Is he wondering:
If this is a child born of God, conceived of in a miraculous way, what does that mean for me?
How am I going to be handle this child?
If I don’t totally understand how this child came to be, how am I going to ever understand the child when he is born, and grows?
Am I equipped to handle this child and this situation?
If Joseph feels he’s unable to cope with a God-child he can use the whole hubbub of Mary’s pregnancy for a smoke screen for his own anxiety and insecurity. He doesn’t mind the thought of being married. He just isn’t sure he can handle being a father of a mystery child who has God mixed up in the whole process.
So he has a way to take care of the whole mess from his standpoint: simply ending the marriage plans quietly. It lets Mary off the hook. And more importantly for him, it lets him off the hook. He protects the special child by breaking off the arrangement, rather than having her stoned, which would kill the child as well. Joseph may have decided, until the angel comes in his dream, that Jesus was just going to be too much for him to handle.
And here’s the personal angle to that question: Is Jesus too much for us to handle as well? Joseph wanted to be a spiritual man. He just didn’t want to be THAT spiritual. When we first become Christians, we may be initially excited about our believing. But then we really run into Jesus. We face all that Jesus is going to demand of our lives. We begin to, alarmingly, realize what it all means to be a Christian. We begin to ask ourselves questions like: Am I strong enough to handle this? Do I have what it takes to really live the Christian life? It’s going to take a lot of strength, and patience, and love, and forgiveness, and endurance. Am I up to it? Or should I look for some way to quietly back away from Jesus? Or, How can I make it look like I’m onboard, but I just can’t live up to all the discipline a real relationship with Jesus will ask of me?
The Christ child will ultimately be more than any of us want to handle. The Christ-man, Jesus, will become even more so. The angel’s task with Joseph is to reassure him he can do it. He can live up to the task of being Mary’s husband and Jesus’ earthly father. It must have worked, because Joseph got right up, after the dream, and did what the angel told him to do.
Maybe, for ourselves, we also need that angelic visitation to reassure us that we can do this. We can be people of faith. We can accept Christ into our lives, believe in him and shoulder all the demands and changes that will be asked of us.
This Christmas, we not only pray for the coming of the Christ-child. We also pray, at the same time, for the angel, who will strengthen us to face Jesus, and the birth of our belief in him.
Monday, December 10, 2012
Visons Of Angels, 2
"Visions Of Angels" 2
Luke 1:26-38
One of the things I like about storytelling, and listening to storytellers, is my fascination for the story itself. I become gripped by the magic of the moment, when story and storyteller and listener (or reader) become one. When you read a good book, and you become completely captivated by it, don’t you see yourself being in the story?
I may be reading in bed at night, but I’m not there--in bed. I’m in the story. I’m with the characters--a silent watcher. My imagination places me in the scenery of whatever moment I am at in the story. When I shut off my iPad and stop reading, I sense that I am at the same time, pulling myself out of the story. I’m disengaging myself from it. I can’t wait until the next time I pick up the iPad and start reading again. I can’t wait to jump back in the scenery--become a part of the story again. Does anyone else find the same things happens with them as you read a book?
I want the same thing to happen to us as we read the Christmas story. Some of you have been hearing and reading the story for years. That familiarity can dull our excitement and fascination about what is going on. We open the pages of our Bible to the story of the birth in Matthew and Luke. Then we think, Oh yeah, I’ve read this a hundred times before. Or, someone stands up to read the verses as they were a moment ago, and you immediately think, Oh yeah, I’ve heard this before. Your little “fascination switch” goes CLICK to the off position.
Maybe part of the problem of why we don’t get pulled in deeply enough to the story is because the details are so spare. Some stories we come to love and read over and over. It’s because we know so many details. We know what people look like. We know what they love and feel passionate about. We know the setting of their lives. We know details. We don’t just know generalities. We know particulars. That’s what makes stories interesting. Details feed our imagination. It’s been said, Life is in the details. That is certainly true about a good story.
But in the birth story of Jesus, we don’t get much detail. In this one part of the story, where the angel Gabriel appears to Mary, there is hardly any detail. For example, what details do we find out about Mary? We find out that she is a virgin. We find out that she is engaged to a man named Joseph. Those two pieces of information are fairly intimate details. Not many of us go around being introduced with statements like, “Hi; I’d like you to meet so-and-so. She’s a virgin.” We probably wouldn’t do that. But that’s how the Bible introduces us to Mary. If that one detail doesn’t pull you into the “raciness” of this story, it at least makes you raise your eyebrows.
As far as other details, there aren’t any to grab you. What does Mary look like? Anybody know? We don’t know. Was she short, tall, plump, or with abs of steel? Did she have a big nose or a little nose? Straight or curly hair? Was she big-boned or frail? Baby-face or a look of maturity? Did she get her clothes from Old Navy or Goodwill? We don’t know.
If you go by most nativity scenes, Mary looks to be in her early 20’s, has brown straight hair, and is as thin as a pencil--even though she just ended a nine month pregnancy. That’s a miracle in itself, at least according to the nativity scene statues, that she lost all her extra pregnancy weight in a matter of minutes after the birth.
Even though the story itself doesn’t give us much detail, we can deduce a few things. If she was betrothed to Joseph, it meant she was of marriageable age. A female of marriageable age in that time in Palestine would have been 14-16 years old. She would have gone through her first cycle to prove she was ready to bear children. She wouldn’t have been marriage material to any man if she wasn’t physically ready to have children. Most girls were married by the time they were 16 years old. So Mary is a 14 to 16 year old, physically ready to have babies.
Let’s get a visual picture of that. Brittany Whitson is in that age range, so in Palestine, she is of marriageable age. Look at Brittany. She is Mary. Ted and M’kala, are you ready to let Brittany get married? Bear a child? What feelings spring to the surface when you envision Brittany as Mary? Are you getting into the story now?
How many of you women were 14-16 year old girls at one time in your life? Can you remember what you were like at that age? From all the 14 to 16 year old girls I have dealt with over the years in youth groups, I find them to be caught in what I might call a “no-woman’s-land.” They go back and forth from the conflicting feelings of wanting to remain little girls and, at the same time, desiring to be young women. One minute they may want to sit on their parents lap, but the next they want all the freedoms adulthood dangles in front of them. One minute they are acting like children, the next they they are sophisticated know-it-alls. Back and forth they go.
Imagine that describes Mary. Caught somewhere between the innocence of childhood and the airs of adulthood. Even though her marriage to Joseph had been arranged by their parents, a wedding may or may not have been immanent. It could have been a year or two off, and she would still be free to run with her childhood friends; be carefree. She wouldn’t have to think about the adult world for some time to come.
But with the angel’s visit, all that changed. No more childhood. No more fun and games. No more running around with friends. In the blink of an eye, with a whispered word, Mary would be pregnant and in nine months go from childhood, to wifehood, to motherhood. Ted and M’Kala, look at Brittany and imagine her making that transition in nine short months. Girls, and women, and parents are you now getting into this story?
But let’s not forget about the angel. Even though Mary is the main character in this story, the angel is an interesting character we wouldn’t want to leave out. We met this same angel last week. His name is Gabriel. Details came out about him in his meeting with Zechariah.
As you will remember, Gabriel stands right next to God and God’s throne in the heavenly court. We found out Gabriel creates fear in those to whom he appears. We found out that Gabriel is a messenger angel, a herald of Good News. Gabriel is sent by God to create clarity and insight for people about what their mission in life is. And we found out that Gabriel gets a bit of an attitude when people question his message.
Imagine Gabriel’s task. Part of his mission was to convince an unmarried 14-16 year old girl to have a baby. Now here comes the hard part. By telling Mary that she is going to have a baby, is Gabriel giving her a choice in the matter? Could Mary have said, “No”? That is a question that Christian thinkers have speculated about for centuries. Was Mary the first girl Gabriel had visited? If there was a choice in the matter, how many doors had Gabriel had slammed in his face?
Imagine Gabriel as a tele-marketer:
“Hi! My name is Gabriel. How are you today?”
“Fine.”
“That’s good. I’m calling as a representative of God in heaven. I just want to take a minute of your time to tell you about a unique opportunity to be an unwed mother.”
(SLAM of phone being hung up.) Gabriel scratches that name off the list and dials up the next number.
It’s been thought by many theologians that Gabriel had to have given Mary the chance to say No. It had to be Mary’s decision. It had to be an act of her free will. She had to agree, in her heart, to accept Gabriel’s, and ultimately, God’s, proposal.
Just the thought of that is intriguing, isn’t it? Was Mary the first and only visit Gabriel had made. Or was Mary one of many in a long succession of visits? How many “No’s” had Gabriel heard before he finally found a girl who would yield to his proposition?
Or, did Mary not have a choice? Was she the one God had chosen, and it was up to Gabriel to talk to her until she gave in or was convinced? That would have been some task, wouldn’t have it? To convince a teenaged girl that, basically, she will comply and she has no choice in the matter. 14-16 year old girls: How much do they like to be told you WILL do something whether you like it or not? Parents of 14-16 year old girls: How do your young teenagers react when you tell them they WILL do this or that, and there will be NO discussion or negotiation?
If Gabriel had any inkling of what a young teenaged girl was like, maybe he was just as much afraid of being in her presence as she was in his. There is that saying about rushing in where angels fear to tread. Maybe that’s especially true about facing a teenaged girl.
One of the other problems facing Gabriel in his negotiation with Mary is that he really can’t offer her any safety nets. What I mean is this. The only question Mary asks is how it can happen that an unmarried, unsexually active girl can spontaneously become pregnant. It’s the same question Zechariah asked Gabriel previously. How can this be? Both Zechariah and Mary know how sex and pregnancy works. And they both ask questions about how it’s supposed to work when it can’t possibly work--each for their own reasons. Gabriel must have thought, “Oh, boy; here we go again.”
Gabriel assures her it can be done. He told her that great line at the end of his announcement, “For there is nothing that God cannot do.” (Evidently Gabriel never went to grammar school to learn about double negatives.) God can, and will, make pregnancy happen. If God can create the world with words, God can create life in a woman’s womb with a single word. But this time Gabriel doesn’t strike Mary silent like he did with Zechariah. It’s evidently different having to face down a teenage girl vs. an old priest.
But as much as God can do, God can’t protect Mary from other people’s mouths. Or thoughts. We will find out next week that her fiancé, Joseph, reacts by wanting to break off the engagement. We can only imagine the reaction of others, like Mary’s parents. Imagine your daughter comes home and says, “Mom, Dad, we need to talk.” You can tell this is going to be one of those, “Uh, oh,” moments.
Or what does Mary and Joseph tell the census worker, once they get to Bethlehem. Remember they went there to register for the census.
Gabriel has put Mary in an indefensible position. Does Gabriel tell Mary that? Does Gabriel let her know she is being set up, not only to have the Savior, but also for a life of unrelenting ridicule and mockery--at least misunderstanding? Did Gabriel say something like, “It’s going to be tough going for a while, but after everyone figures out what’s happened, there will something called the Catholic Church that will worship you and say prayers to you as the mother of God?
In Gabriel’s recruiting of Mary, it doesn’t appear that he tells her the downside of being the mother of the Savior. Just the good stuff. Which is usually the way it goes, isn’t it? When you interview for a job, no one ever tells you all the garbage you’ll have to deal with. And we don’t ask questions about those kinds of things either. We want to know about the “benefits.” That’s what Gabriel told Mary, leaving the other for her to find out on her own.
To her credit, Mary accepts the mission. Whether she had a choice or not, she humbly and willingly bows to God’s wishes. She agrees to be the Savior-bearer to the world. She agrees to be the one who will suckle the God-child: the one who will be the Savior of us all.
This is a wonderful story. This is THE STORY. I hope we find ourselves pulled into that story this Christmas. We aren’t just onlookers to a wonderful story, but participants--characters in the drama that started literally 2000 years ago with a young teenaged girl and an angel’s visit.
Luke 1:26-38
One of the things I like about storytelling, and listening to storytellers, is my fascination for the story itself. I become gripped by the magic of the moment, when story and storyteller and listener (or reader) become one. When you read a good book, and you become completely captivated by it, don’t you see yourself being in the story?
I may be reading in bed at night, but I’m not there--in bed. I’m in the story. I’m with the characters--a silent watcher. My imagination places me in the scenery of whatever moment I am at in the story. When I shut off my iPad and stop reading, I sense that I am at the same time, pulling myself out of the story. I’m disengaging myself from it. I can’t wait until the next time I pick up the iPad and start reading again. I can’t wait to jump back in the scenery--become a part of the story again. Does anyone else find the same things happens with them as you read a book?
I want the same thing to happen to us as we read the Christmas story. Some of you have been hearing and reading the story for years. That familiarity can dull our excitement and fascination about what is going on. We open the pages of our Bible to the story of the birth in Matthew and Luke. Then we think, Oh yeah, I’ve read this a hundred times before. Or, someone stands up to read the verses as they were a moment ago, and you immediately think, Oh yeah, I’ve heard this before. Your little “fascination switch” goes CLICK to the off position.
Maybe part of the problem of why we don’t get pulled in deeply enough to the story is because the details are so spare. Some stories we come to love and read over and over. It’s because we know so many details. We know what people look like. We know what they love and feel passionate about. We know the setting of their lives. We know details. We don’t just know generalities. We know particulars. That’s what makes stories interesting. Details feed our imagination. It’s been said, Life is in the details. That is certainly true about a good story.
But in the birth story of Jesus, we don’t get much detail. In this one part of the story, where the angel Gabriel appears to Mary, there is hardly any detail. For example, what details do we find out about Mary? We find out that she is a virgin. We find out that she is engaged to a man named Joseph. Those two pieces of information are fairly intimate details. Not many of us go around being introduced with statements like, “Hi; I’d like you to meet so-and-so. She’s a virgin.” We probably wouldn’t do that. But that’s how the Bible introduces us to Mary. If that one detail doesn’t pull you into the “raciness” of this story, it at least makes you raise your eyebrows.
As far as other details, there aren’t any to grab you. What does Mary look like? Anybody know? We don’t know. Was she short, tall, plump, or with abs of steel? Did she have a big nose or a little nose? Straight or curly hair? Was she big-boned or frail? Baby-face or a look of maturity? Did she get her clothes from Old Navy or Goodwill? We don’t know.
If you go by most nativity scenes, Mary looks to be in her early 20’s, has brown straight hair, and is as thin as a pencil--even though she just ended a nine month pregnancy. That’s a miracle in itself, at least according to the nativity scene statues, that she lost all her extra pregnancy weight in a matter of minutes after the birth.
Even though the story itself doesn’t give us much detail, we can deduce a few things. If she was betrothed to Joseph, it meant she was of marriageable age. A female of marriageable age in that time in Palestine would have been 14-16 years old. She would have gone through her first cycle to prove she was ready to bear children. She wouldn’t have been marriage material to any man if she wasn’t physically ready to have children. Most girls were married by the time they were 16 years old. So Mary is a 14 to 16 year old, physically ready to have babies.
Let’s get a visual picture of that. Brittany Whitson is in that age range, so in Palestine, she is of marriageable age. Look at Brittany. She is Mary. Ted and M’kala, are you ready to let Brittany get married? Bear a child? What feelings spring to the surface when you envision Brittany as Mary? Are you getting into the story now?
How many of you women were 14-16 year old girls at one time in your life? Can you remember what you were like at that age? From all the 14 to 16 year old girls I have dealt with over the years in youth groups, I find them to be caught in what I might call a “no-woman’s-land.” They go back and forth from the conflicting feelings of wanting to remain little girls and, at the same time, desiring to be young women. One minute they may want to sit on their parents lap, but the next they want all the freedoms adulthood dangles in front of them. One minute they are acting like children, the next they they are sophisticated know-it-alls. Back and forth they go.
Imagine that describes Mary. Caught somewhere between the innocence of childhood and the airs of adulthood. Even though her marriage to Joseph had been arranged by their parents, a wedding may or may not have been immanent. It could have been a year or two off, and she would still be free to run with her childhood friends; be carefree. She wouldn’t have to think about the adult world for some time to come.
But with the angel’s visit, all that changed. No more childhood. No more fun and games. No more running around with friends. In the blink of an eye, with a whispered word, Mary would be pregnant and in nine months go from childhood, to wifehood, to motherhood. Ted and M’Kala, look at Brittany and imagine her making that transition in nine short months. Girls, and women, and parents are you now getting into this story?
But let’s not forget about the angel. Even though Mary is the main character in this story, the angel is an interesting character we wouldn’t want to leave out. We met this same angel last week. His name is Gabriel. Details came out about him in his meeting with Zechariah.
As you will remember, Gabriel stands right next to God and God’s throne in the heavenly court. We found out Gabriel creates fear in those to whom he appears. We found out that Gabriel is a messenger angel, a herald of Good News. Gabriel is sent by God to create clarity and insight for people about what their mission in life is. And we found out that Gabriel gets a bit of an attitude when people question his message.
Imagine Gabriel’s task. Part of his mission was to convince an unmarried 14-16 year old girl to have a baby. Now here comes the hard part. By telling Mary that she is going to have a baby, is Gabriel giving her a choice in the matter? Could Mary have said, “No”? That is a question that Christian thinkers have speculated about for centuries. Was Mary the first girl Gabriel had visited? If there was a choice in the matter, how many doors had Gabriel had slammed in his face?
Imagine Gabriel as a tele-marketer:
“Hi! My name is Gabriel. How are you today?”
“Fine.”
“That’s good. I’m calling as a representative of God in heaven. I just want to take a minute of your time to tell you about a unique opportunity to be an unwed mother.”
(SLAM of phone being hung up.) Gabriel scratches that name off the list and dials up the next number.
It’s been thought by many theologians that Gabriel had to have given Mary the chance to say No. It had to be Mary’s decision. It had to be an act of her free will. She had to agree, in her heart, to accept Gabriel’s, and ultimately, God’s, proposal.
Just the thought of that is intriguing, isn’t it? Was Mary the first and only visit Gabriel had made. Or was Mary one of many in a long succession of visits? How many “No’s” had Gabriel heard before he finally found a girl who would yield to his proposition?
Or, did Mary not have a choice? Was she the one God had chosen, and it was up to Gabriel to talk to her until she gave in or was convinced? That would have been some task, wouldn’t have it? To convince a teenaged girl that, basically, she will comply and she has no choice in the matter. 14-16 year old girls: How much do they like to be told you WILL do something whether you like it or not? Parents of 14-16 year old girls: How do your young teenagers react when you tell them they WILL do this or that, and there will be NO discussion or negotiation?
If Gabriel had any inkling of what a young teenaged girl was like, maybe he was just as much afraid of being in her presence as she was in his. There is that saying about rushing in where angels fear to tread. Maybe that’s especially true about facing a teenaged girl.
One of the other problems facing Gabriel in his negotiation with Mary is that he really can’t offer her any safety nets. What I mean is this. The only question Mary asks is how it can happen that an unmarried, unsexually active girl can spontaneously become pregnant. It’s the same question Zechariah asked Gabriel previously. How can this be? Both Zechariah and Mary know how sex and pregnancy works. And they both ask questions about how it’s supposed to work when it can’t possibly work--each for their own reasons. Gabriel must have thought, “Oh, boy; here we go again.”
Gabriel assures her it can be done. He told her that great line at the end of his announcement, “For there is nothing that God cannot do.” (Evidently Gabriel never went to grammar school to learn about double negatives.) God can, and will, make pregnancy happen. If God can create the world with words, God can create life in a woman’s womb with a single word. But this time Gabriel doesn’t strike Mary silent like he did with Zechariah. It’s evidently different having to face down a teenage girl vs. an old priest.
But as much as God can do, God can’t protect Mary from other people’s mouths. Or thoughts. We will find out next week that her fiancé, Joseph, reacts by wanting to break off the engagement. We can only imagine the reaction of others, like Mary’s parents. Imagine your daughter comes home and says, “Mom, Dad, we need to talk.” You can tell this is going to be one of those, “Uh, oh,” moments.
Or what does Mary and Joseph tell the census worker, once they get to Bethlehem. Remember they went there to register for the census.
Gabriel has put Mary in an indefensible position. Does Gabriel tell Mary that? Does Gabriel let her know she is being set up, not only to have the Savior, but also for a life of unrelenting ridicule and mockery--at least misunderstanding? Did Gabriel say something like, “It’s going to be tough going for a while, but after everyone figures out what’s happened, there will something called the Catholic Church that will worship you and say prayers to you as the mother of God?
In Gabriel’s recruiting of Mary, it doesn’t appear that he tells her the downside of being the mother of the Savior. Just the good stuff. Which is usually the way it goes, isn’t it? When you interview for a job, no one ever tells you all the garbage you’ll have to deal with. And we don’t ask questions about those kinds of things either. We want to know about the “benefits.” That’s what Gabriel told Mary, leaving the other for her to find out on her own.
To her credit, Mary accepts the mission. Whether she had a choice or not, she humbly and willingly bows to God’s wishes. She agrees to be the Savior-bearer to the world. She agrees to be the one who will suckle the God-child: the one who will be the Savior of us all.
This is a wonderful story. This is THE STORY. I hope we find ourselves pulled into that story this Christmas. We aren’t just onlookers to a wonderful story, but participants--characters in the drama that started literally 2000 years ago with a young teenaged girl and an angel’s visit.
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