We continue today with our sermon series on disputing with God. The past two sermons in this series have been on the book of Exodus, and in particular with Moses and the people, as they struggled in the wilderness and tried to remain faithful through that time of unknowing and uncertainty. In some ways, we’re kind of moving backward to Genesis 18, but one of the things I wanted to point out that maybe we don’t often think about is that we open the Bible and there’s Genesis at the beginning.

It starts with the creation story, and we think that’s a very natural beginning narratively. But in terms of the way that the Bible was constructed, Exodus, and the Exodus experience of the people being released from slavery in Egypt and God liberating them, is actually kind of the beginning point of the story of the people of God, the Hebrew and Israel. But the book of Genesis then is kind of the prequel.

So it’s kind of like around Christmas time I’ll remind us that, you know, it wasn’t that the story of Jesus’ birth was written down at the time of Jesus’ birth. It was written years and years later, hundreds of years later, really, once people had kind of understood the importance of Jesus’ life and they said, “Gee, I wonder how he was born. We should figure that out and tell that story.” In the same way, also, the people who are liberated from Egypt say, “Well, gee, how did this all come about?”

And so they go back and they tell the stories that we have in Genesis. Most of the stories in Genesis, of course, revolve around a man named Abraham and his wife Sarah. Just preceding the passage that we are about to read, God has come to them, and this is just to help us kind of orient overall into the big picture. This is after Noah and the Ark and the flood, and then the rainbow, and God has promised never to again destroy the earth.

Then God seeks to begin again with this project that God is trying to carry out through humanity and says, Abraham and his wife, that’s where I’m going to start. I’m going to build a nation through them. And even in their old age, then God comes and visits them with two strangers. Abraham and Sarah open up their home to them, welcome them, feed them, and come to find out that they are messengers from God and that they are God’s chosen people to begin again and that through them, even though they are old, they will have many descendants, as many as the stars in the sky.

And then from there, the two visitors go out and we pick up the story from there in Genesis 18. This translation just calls them the men. Other translations might have visitors or even angels.

Genesis 18: 16-33                                                                                                                                 

Then the men set out from there, and they looked toward Sodom, and Abraham went with them to set them on their way. The Lord said, “Shall I hide from Abraham what I am about to do, seeing that Abraham shall become a great and mighty nation, and all the nations of the earth shall be blessed in him? No, for I have chosen him, that he may charge his children and his household after him to keep the way of the Lord by doing righteousness and justice, so that the Lord may bring about for Abraham what he has promised him.” Then the Lord said, “How great is the outcry against Sodom and Gomorrah and how very grave their sin! I must go down and see whether they have done altogether according to the outcry that has come to me, and if not, I will know.”

So the men turned from there and went toward Sodom, while Abraham remained standing before the Lord. Then Abraham came near and said, “Will you indeed sweep away the righteous with the wicked? Suppose there are fifty righteous within the city; will you then sweep away the place and not forgive it for the fifty righteous who are in it? Far be it from you to do such a thing, to slay the righteous with the wicked, so that the righteous fare as the wicked! Far be that from you! Shall not the Judge of all the earth do what is just?” And the Lord said, “If I find at Sodom fifty righteous in the city, I will forgive the whole place for their sake.” Abraham answered, “Let me take it upon myself to speak to my lord, I who am but dust and ashes. Suppose five of the fifty righteous are lacking? Will you destroy the whole city for lack of five?” And he said, “I will not destroy it if I find forty-five there.” Again he spoke to him, “Suppose forty are found there.” He answered, “For the sake of forty I will not do it.” Then he said, “Oh, do not let my lord be angry if I speak. Suppose thirty are found there.” He answered, “I will not do it, if I find thirty there.” He said, “Let me take it upon myself to speak to my lord. Suppose twenty are found there.” He answered, “For the sake of twenty I will not destroy it.” Then he said, “Oh, do not let my lord be angry if I speak just once more. Suppose ten are found there.” He answered, “For the sake of ten I will not destroy it.” And the Lord went his way, when he had finished speaking to Abraham, and Abraham returned to his place.

For the Word of God in scripture,
For the Word of God among us,
For the Word of God within us,
Thanks be to God.

***

Genesis 18, the story of Sodom and Gomorrah, is perhaps one of the most misunderstood passages of the entire Bible. The two towns or cities become the focus of God’s anger because of their wickedness. Yet the exact nature of the wickedness is never specifically mentioned.

There’s mention of the way they treat outsiders, how they abuse them and mistreat them. There are certainly accounts of assault and violence. And of course, we all know that this passage has been used over the centuries to shame and exclude and other people of same-sex attraction. People who want to oppose homosexuality from a religious viewpoint point to this passage as their source to affirm homosexuality is a sin.

Now, given the sensitive nature of this topic, I don’t want to feel the need to move down this path, but let me just say this: To equate the actions of any two people in love with that of a violent assault of someone on a stranger does not hold water. It just doesn’t.

So let me relate this to more current events. The New York Knickerbockers—I like to say the whole name, the Knickerbockers—won the NBA championship for the first time in 53 years this past week.

And Knicks fans have lined the city streets in celebration. And as there is any time people drink and celebrate in public, fights have broken out. These fights have nothing to do with being a Knicks fan or a basketball fan and everything to do with being drunk and probably way overstimulated.

We would never say that God is angry with all Knicks fans because of these incidents. The only people who would say that are people who are already not Knicks fans. They will see these incidents as backing their bias. But the bias already existed.

Likewise, nobody reading Genesis 18 would come to the conclusion that God disapproves of same-sex relationships except for those who are already biased against gays and lesbians. It is the violence and assault that deserves God’s anger. Period. That is it.

Those who would use this passage to defend their bigotry or worse, their own physical violence or verbal violence against those with whom they disagree are actually guilty of the very thing that put Sodom and Gomorrah in God’s crosshairs in the first place.

When we widen out and read this story in context, we realize that the real issue at the heart of the passage is hospitality to strangers.

Hospitality to strangers, you see, is a biblical mandate. It could not be more clear. The Bible drives home this point time and time again. You take care of the stranger in your midst, the foreigner or the alien in your country. Why? Again, it goes back to that origin point for the Hebrew people because you were once strangers yourself. You were once foreigners in a foreign land, and you know what it’s like to be mistreated.

Right before the passage we read for today, as I explained in the setup, Abraham and Sarah offer hospitality to strangers. Strangers, who it turns out, were messengers or angels sent from God. And because Abraham and Sarah showed kindness to strangers and welcomed the foreigners into their home and fed and cared for them, God chooses them to begin again after the flood.

And in this passage, God makes a covenant with Abraham. God says, I will be your God, and you will be my people. He tells Abraham that through him he will build a great nation as numerous as the stars.

But this is the second covenant that God makes. The first one is after Noah and the flood, where God says, I will never again wipe out all the people because of their sin.

Now, as soon as the covenant is made, who do we expect to break it?

Abraham, right?

And don’t worry, Abraham makes his own mistakes. But biblically speaking, God is the first to be tempted to violate the terms of the covenant. Did you catch it? When God hears about the sin of Sodom and Gomorrah and the way they treat strangers, God decides to wipe them out. Well, that would break both covenants, wouldn’t it?

So God wonders, seemingly out loud, should I just go ahead and do it, but not tell Abraham?

Wow. That’s really interesting, isn’t it?

We think we’re the ones who should be afraid of God’s judgment. But according to Genesis, God seems to be a little bit afraid of Abraham’s judgments, not the other way around.

This is a turning point in Scripture and the basis for our faith and trust in God. To paraphrase the great Swiss theologian Karl Barth, we may choose to live without God. Humanity may prefer a godless existence. But God never chooses to live without us.

Perhaps the central characteristic and identity of the triune God is the refusal to ever be without humanity.

So one way to read this story of Sodom and Gomorrah, a good way I think, is to understand that this is actually a test for God. Prior to Abraham, God was free to do whatever God wanted to do. But now, now God is bound by the covenant that God has made.

God knows that if he lets Abraham in on his plan, Abraham will disapprove. And indeed he does. Abraham says, what if there are 50 righteous who live in these towns? Will you spare them then? God says yes, if there are 50. What about 45? 30, 20, 10.

Just, by the way, footnote, this is where the notion of a minyan comes from. A minyan is that ten people are required for certain prayers in the Jewish tradition. You have to have a minyan. And so, you know, there are some times where there’s a group that might be joining at a synagogue and there’s eight of them and they have to go out and flag down two other Jews to come in and have a minyan so that they can have prayers. That’s where this comes from: If there are ten, I will not destroy the city.

Like Moses, Abraham convinces God to show mercy. But let’s be clear, it’s not the case that God is vengeful and has to be convinced to show mercy. Rather, it is that God is merciful. But sometimes in the midst of anger, God forgets God’s self. It has to be reminded of God’s true nature.

Now it has been said to those who believe, no explanation is necessary, those who do not believe, no explanation will satisfy. I’m not sure if I buy that 100%, but I think it makes a good point. If we are inclined to faith, if we have a sense that we are a part of something bigger, if we believe that there is a benevolent presence that infuses the universe with life and meaning, we don’t need the Bible to convince us.

Rather, the Bible helps us work out what kind of God we believe in. And rather than just telling us what kind of God is, the Bible tells us stories about God that were shared throughout human history of people working out what kind of God is, considering what we know about God and what we know about the world. And if we approach the Bible this way, what we actually find is a treasure chest of the world’s biggest ideas and questions.

I mean, how limited and unhelpful is the interpretation that Genesis 18 is about how two people choose to share their love and affection. How mean-spirited and harmful is that interpretation? And what does it say about God?

Nothing good.

But it was the early Christian theologian and philosopher Augustine of Hippo who wrote, “whoever then thinks that he understands the Holy Scriptures or any part of them, but puts such an interpretation upon them as does not tend to build up this twofold love of God and neighbor, does not yet understand them as he ought.” In other words, if your interpretation of Scripture doesn’t lead you to love God and neighbor more, you have not yet understood Scripture correctly.

If your understanding of Scripture does not lead you to love God and neighbor more, you have not yet understood it correctly. Conversely, as the quote on our bulletin cover today states, “Hate, it appears, is the heresy.”

Friends, what I’m trying to get at here is that faith is not some static statement of beliefs to which we choose to ascribe or not. Not. Faith is a living, evolving relationship with God and one another. Faith, to put it in the language of the book of Genesis, is the living out of the covenant between God and humanity. “Faith,” writes Madeleine Lengel, “is what makes life bearable with all of its tragedies and ambiguities and sudden, startling joys.”

And one of the many ambiguities we encounter in life is the very issue of Sodom and Gomorrah. Not human sexuality, but how justice and mercy relate to one another. Because God has a point here. As much as we don’t want to admit it, I mean in the abstract, it’s easy to agree with Abraham. It’s not right to punish the innocent along with the guilty. That’s not fair. That’s not justice.

But neither is it fair to the innocent to leave the wicked go unpunished or unchecked, right? Bobby Williamson points out “there’s no discussion here about simply stopping the wickedness in one way or another. Or even just eliminating the people perpetuating wickedness while leaving the righteous alone.” That’s never even on the table. The assumption here is that they are all in it together. “But if mercy in this case basically means ignoring the land’s outcry and letting the wickedness stand, what does that say? And what does it mean for the innocent who continue to live there?” And he concludes with this: “In a modern society that so values individual autonomy, how do we think about the ways in which our fates are inextricably tied?”

Now that is a question worth wrestling with, don’t you agree? That will get us a lot further down the road than judging what we think about the way that two people love one another. How do justice and mercy relate? And how are our fates intertwined? With one another.

I don’t have answers to that. But I think that’s what we’re supposed to be wrestling with as people of faith.

It’s an odd notion to me that our image of God that we receive as children would not continue to grow and change with us as we get older and experience more of life in the world. We need an adult image of God to carry with us, to walk with us in this complicated and confusing world. But so many of us were never given permission, or whatever, to allow our notion of God to evolve, to wrestle with it in meaningful ways. And so we look like people who are trying to engage this complicated world with this very rudimentary image of God.

So if you’ve never received permission to wrestle with the image of God that you carry with you, please, please consider this sermon series your sign. Permission is granted. God welcomes your questions, your doubts, and your challenges because God has decided not to be God without you. So take it on good authority. Not mine, two guys named Moses and Abraham.

Amen.

The post Disputing with God: Advocating for Others appeared first on Roland Park Presbyterian Church.

Our reading this morning comes from Exodus chapters 33 and 34. This is the follow-up to what we read two weeks ago, where Moses was up on the mountain talking with God. The people were down waiting for Moses to return with a word from God. And it was taking longer than they expected. So they turned to Aaron, Moses’ brother, and said, “Moses and God seem to have abandoned us. Please fashion for us another God that we can worship.”

Aaron said, “Give me all your jewelry” and melted it down, made a golden calf, and the people worshiped. God looked down and saw what the people were doing and said to Moses… This really upsets me. And I think I’m just done with these people, and I’m going to just wipe them out like we did with the flood. And Moses reminds God of God’s promises and faithfulness to God’s people. At the end of the passage, we find out that Moses has changed God’s mind. God decides not to visit destruction upon the people again. But this is what happens next:

Exodus 33:1–23; 34:4–9                                                                                                                  

The Lord said to Moses, “Go, leave this place, you and the people whom you have brought up out of the land of Egypt, and go to the land of which I swore to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, saying, ‘To your descendants I will give it.’ I will send an angel before you, and I will drive out the Canaanites, the Amorites, the Hittites, the Perizzites, the Hivites, and the Jebusites. Go up to a land flowing with milk and honey, but I will not go up among you, or I would consume you on the way, for you are a stiff-necked people.”

When the people heard these harsh words, they mourned, and no one put on ornaments. For the Lord had said to Moses, “Say to the Israelites, ‘You are a stiff-necked people; if for a single moment I should go up among you, I would consume you. So now take off your ornaments, and I will decide what to do to you.’ ” Therefore the Israelites stripped themselves of their ornaments, from Mount Horeb onward.

Now Moses used to take the tent and pitch it outside the camp, far off from the camp; he called it the tent of meeting. And everyone who sought the Lord would go out to the tent of meeting, which was outside the camp. Whenever Moses went out to the tent, all the people would rise and stand, each of them, at the entrance of their tents and watch Moses until he had gone into the tent. When Moses entered the tent, the pillar of cloud would descend and stand at the entrance of the tent, and the Lord would speak with Moses. When all the people saw the pillar of cloud standing at the entrance of the tent, all the people would rise and bow down, all of them, at the entrance of their tent. Thus the Lord used to speak to Moses face to face, as one speaks to a friend. Then he would return to the camp, but his young assistant, Joshua son of Nun, would not leave the tent.

Moses said to the Lord, “See, you have said to me, ‘Bring up this people,’ but you have not let me know whom you will send with me. Yet you have said, ‘I know you by name, and you have also found favor in my sight.’ Now if I have found favor in your sight, please show me your ways, so that I may know you and find favor in your sight. Consider, too, that this nation is your people.” He said, “My presence will go with you, and I will give you rest.” And he said to him, “If your presence will not go, do not bring us up from here. For how shall it be known that I have found favor in your sight, I and your people, unless you go with us? In this way, we shall be distinct, I and your people, from every people on the face of the earth.”

The Lord said to Moses, “I will also do this thing that you have asked, for you have found favor in my sight, and I know you by name.” Moses said, “Please show me your glory.” And he said, “I will make all my goodness pass before you and will proclaim before you the name, ‘The Lord,’ and I will be gracious to whom I will be gracious and will show mercy on whom I will show mercy. But,” he said, “you cannot see my face, for no one shall see me and live.” And the Lord continued, “See, there is a place by me where you shall stand on the rock, and while my glory passes by I will put you in a cleft of the rock, and I will cover you with my hand until I have passed by; then I will take away my hand, and you shall see my back, but my face shall not be seen.”

So Moses cut two tablets of stone like the former ones, and he rose early in the morning and went up on Mount Sinai, as the Lord had commanded him, and took in his hand the two tablets of stone. The Lord descended in the cloud and stood with him there and proclaimed the name, “The Lord.” The Lord passed before him and proclaimed,

“The Lord, the Lord,
a God merciful and gracious,
slow to anger,
and abounding in steadfast love and faithfulness,
keeping steadfast love for the thousandth generation,
forgiving iniquity and transgression and sin,
yet by no means clearing the guilty,
but visiting the iniquity of the parents
upon the children
and the children’s children
to the third and the fourth generation.” 

And Moses quickly bowed down to the ground and worshiped. He said, “If now I have found favor in your sight, my Lord, I pray, let my Lord go with us. Although this is a stiff-necked people, pardon our iniquity and our sin, and take us for your inheritance.”

For the Word of God in scripture,
For the Word of God among us,
For the Word of God within us,
Thanks be to God.

***

The older I get, and the longer I have been in this gig of talking about God for a living, the more and more I am convinced that those that speak of God the loudest, those that speak with the most certainty and authority of eternal matters, those that claim the mantle of faithful and true, are actually most likely to be worshiping an idol of their own creation.

The god they proclaim is so often small and unworthy of the title. This god only cares for some people, not everyone. The god they proclaim is bound by formulas that make little sense and force God into making decisions that are cruel and capricious. The god they proclaim offers salvation by syllables: if you say the right words in the right order, forgiveness and mercy and salvation are yours, no matter what you have done or said previously. That magic incantation is like an eternal get-out-of-jail-free card.

This god is available to those who are willing to turn off their ability to think critically and freely, and just believe certain things to be true. If you call on the name of this god or pray in a certain way, this god will always answer.

Just listen to them and ask, “How big is this God, really?” And does this sound like the God we encounter in scripture? Barbara Brown Taylor makes it plain that it is not. She writes, “Only an idol always answers.”

The God that we encounter in the Bible is no idol. And let me be very clear, I am not talking about idols like the Hebrews built with Aaron, a statue made of their gold jewelry. I am talking about the kind of idol that we make with our minds, false gods of our own making.

Now, to be sure, we all make God in our own image to one degree or another. Recognizing the human proclivity to idolatry is, perhaps, the first step to a more authentic and robust faith. That is why the Bible talks about it early and often. There is little that makes God angrier than idolatry. But again, not for the reasons we may have been led to believe. It is not because God has such a fragile ego that God must be worshiped alone and given credit for everything. Again, what a small god that is. Rather, it is because making God in our own image is the first step into us believing that God is in our corner and on our side, which can be used to justify all sorts of atrocities. Anne Lamott reminds us, “You can safely assume you’ve created God in your own image when it turns out that God hates all the same people you do.”

Passages like the one we just read remind us of the dangers of such idolatry, not only because they explicitly tell us so, but because they present us with a God which does not fit neatly into any of our boxes or preconceived notions. The God of Exodus is not a divine therapist sent to make everything in our lives better. The God Moses encounters is wild, free, and not subject to any limits we might set on the divine.

In today’s passage, Moses continues to argue with God over what should be done with the Hebrew people in the wilderness. Let me offer a quick recap up to this point. The people found themselves captive in Egypt, slaves to Pharaoh. Sent by God who heard their cry, Moses frees the people and leads them into the wilderness, where they wander for generations, guided by their hope in the promise of a better life.

But when things take longer than they expect, when they are hungry and tired, when they start to lose faith in Moses and question what kind of God would bring them out into the wilderness just to let them starve to death, they begin to hedge their bets. They start to crave a god who will do what they want them to do.

The biblical witness tells us that when people start to take matters into their own hands, when they start to remake God in their image, God gets angry with them. And not just angry, but furious. So much so that in the passage we read two weeks ago, Moses has to convince God not to wipe the people out. You may remember that Moses won the argument, and the text tells us that God changes God’s mind about the fate of the people. But the story goes on.

In today’s passage, God is still mad, and so while God has decided not to destroy the people, neither does God want anything more to do with them. God tells Moses, “Fine, they can find their own way to the promised land. I am done with them.” Again, Moses intervenes—this time listening to both sides, like a mediator.

Here is how one commentator summarizes what happens: “By the end, God and Israel seem to accept one another as they are. The people confess they are stiff-necked, but God commits to being with them in spite of their shortcomings. Likewise, God reveals a divine Self that is anger as well as compassion. This relationship is messier than we might like, but God and the people remain together in the messiness, committed to a future together.”

That’s all well and good, but what are we to do with this mess? How does it help us in our faith today?

Rabbi, professor, and leader of the U.S. Civil Rights Movement, Abraham Joseph Heschel, distinguishes between the God of wrath and the wrath of God. He writes, “When I consider the violence my own country, my elected officials, and my tax dollars now inflict on the world, I think of divine wrath. Divine wrath is the cry of the mother whose child has gone to war, to prison, to poverty, to hatred. It is the ache in the heart of the universe—when love is mocked, when power crushes the weak, when truth is twisted into a weapon, when life is thrown away like trash.

“I am told that wrath is not the final story, that God does not give up on us. That beneath the fury, there remains love—fierce and aching. A love that grieves what could have been and should have been, and works toward what still can be, even amid the tragedy. But we must taste the wrath in order to know the hope. We must feel the burn of divine pain before we can feel the balm of promise.”

Passages like those we are reading in our Disputing with God series, like the one we have read today with Moses and God, show us that our relationship with God is not a one-way street, but God invites our whole selves, including our brains and our experiences, into the relationship. Look again at our passage. God is displeased with the people who think of God as a far-off dictator. God is pleased with Moses, who feels free to disagree with God. As Richard Rohr reminds us, “The people who know God well—mystics, hermits, prayerful people—always meet a lover, not a dictator.”

Friends, this summer I invite you to shed the image of God as a taskmaster in the sky, the god who cares more for formulas of sin and righteousness, the god who needs you to change before you can be loved and accepted.

Moses shows us that the God we find in the Bible is a God of relationship. It is the God who loves us. All of us. Period. No qualifications and explanations. That is the beginning and end of everything. In between, there is a whole lot that matters too. God does not want us causing harm to one another. God does not want us taking creation for granted or damaging the world we inhabit and on which we depend. God cares about these things not because God cares about some arbitrary rules, but because God cares about us, about how we live together and treat one another.

This type of faith may be messier than we would like. It does not offer the comfort of certainty. True faith humbles itself before a mystery. To paraphrase Paul, “It is not envious or boastful or arrogant or rude. It does not insist on its own way.”

What I think we will notice as we continue this series of Disputing with God is that it is the image of God that we carry with us that needs to change. It is not God, but our version of God, that is the problem. The move, counterintuitively, may be toward more doubt and less certainty. After all, which takes more faith?

As Barbara Brown Taylor reminds us, “Only an idol always answers.” The God of Moses, the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, the God of Jesus Christ, the God of you and me, is not an idol, but a partner. This God invites us into a relationship that is messy, yes, but is full of love and truth. Amen.

The post Disputing with God: Repairing Relationships appeared first on Roland Park Presbyterian Church.

Discussion Questions:

1. Recognizing Our Images of God:

• Pastor Mark says, “The god they proclaim is so often small and unworthy of the title.” What are some ways people, including ourselves, can make God too small?
• How can we tell the difference between the living God we encounter in scripture and an idol we have created in our own image?

2. Idolatry and Certainty:

• The sermon reflects on Barbara Brown Taylor’s line, “Only an idol always answers.” How does this challenge the desire for certainty in faith?
• Have you ever experienced a season when God felt silent, mysterious, or hard to understand? What did that season teach you?

3. Moses and Honest Relationship with God:

• In Exodus 33:1–23; 34:4–9, Moses argues with God and acts as a mediator for the people. What does this suggest about the kind of relationship God invites us into?
• Pastor Mark says, “God is pleased with Moses, who feels free to disagree with God.” How might disagreement, questioning, or wrestling become part of a faithful life?

4. Wrath, Compassion, and Repair:

• The sermon describes God’s anger not as fragile ego, but as grief over harm, injustice, and broken relationship. How does this change the way you understand divine wrath?
• What does it mean to say that God remains committed to relationship, even in the messiness?

5. Faith Beyond Formulas:

• Pastor Mark invites us to shed “the image of God as a taskmaster in the sky.” What images of God do you need to release in order to trust more deeply in God’s love?
• How does the idea that God loves us “period” — with no qualifications or explanations — shape the way we treat ourselves and others?

6. Applying the Sermon:

• This week, where might you practice a faith that is more honest, humble, and open to mystery?
• How can RPPC continue to be a community where people are free to ask questions, repair relationships, pursue justice, practice hospitality, and engage curious faith?

The post Sermon Discussion Guide: Disputing with God: Repairing Relationships appeared first on Roland Park Presbyterian Church.

Our reading today is from Paul’s letter to the Philippians chapter 1. Just a reminder that outside of the Gospels and the book of Acts, most of the rest of the Christian scriptures, the New Testament is one side of a conversation. We’re essentially reading Paul’s outgoing mail, and we don’t have the other side of the conversation. Although we can kind of sometimes piece it together from other clues from Scripture.

We may remember a few weeks ago we read from the book of Acts when Paul and Silas visited the town of Philippi in northern Greece, how they kind of encountered some trouble there and were jailed, and how even in the midst of being jailed they sang hymns and prayed and were attracting people to the faith, even their jailer. Paul established a community there and last week we read the beginning of his letter to the Philippians as he’s writing to them some years down the road after that visit.

This is a community, and this is not always the case with Paul, where he has great fondness for them and he really just wants to kind of encourage them along. Some other times he’s kind of addressing problems or dissatisfaction within the community in Philippians, by and large, Paul is just trying to encourage them along. They’re doing well. He wants them to continue to grow in love for one another and grow in faith and in service of others. And so we encounter this reading then from Philippians:

Philippians 2: 1-13

If, then, there is any comfort in Christ, any consolation from love, any partnership in the Spirit, any tender affection and sympathy, make my joy complete: be of the same mind, having the same love, being in full accord and of one mind. Do nothing from selfish ambition or empty conceit, but in humility regard others as better than yourselves. Let each of you look not to your own interests but to the interests of others. Let the same mind be in you that was in Christ Jesus,

who, though he existed in the form of God,
did not regard equality with God
as something to be grasped,
but emptied himself,
taking the form of a slave,
assuming human likeness.
And being found in appearance as a human,
he humbled himself
and became obedient to the point of death—
even death on a cross.

Therefore God exalted him even more highly
and gave him the name
that is above every other name,
so that at the name given to Jesus
every knee should bend,
in heaven and on earth and under the earth,
and every tongue should confess
that Jesus Christ is Lord,
to the glory of God the Father.

Therefore, my beloved, just as you have always obeyed me, not only in my presence but much more now in my absence, work on your own salvation with fear and trembling, for it is God who is at work in you, enabling you both to will and to work for his good pleasure.

For the Word of God in scripture,
For the Word of God among us,
For the Word of God within us,
Thanks be to God.

***

So today on the National Mall in DC, the White House is sponsoring a nine-hour event called Rededicate 250. Thousands of Christians will gather to reclaim what they believe to be the Christian roots of our country and to rededicate our country as one nation under God.

Now, as a Christian pastor, you might think I would be in favor of such a thing.

But you would be wrong. And I will tell you why.

Now, to be completely transparent, many of my objections could be rightly categorized as political. I think you all know we certainly address politics here. I don’t know how to preach and not address politics, because politics is life, right? But the pulpit is not a place for partisan politics—except when they step into my territory. And I would say Rededicate 250 is firmly in my wheelhouse here.

So my objections are—even though I do have political ones—I’m going to try my best to put those aside and concentrate on the theological reasons, not of what it means to be an American, but what it means to be a Christian.

So to be clear, I think there are plenty of reasons to object to this as Americans, but I do want to claim something really important about what it means to be Presbyterian.

Because, see, as Presbyterians, we actually value a diversity of thought and opinion. We not only value it, we invite it, we expect it, okay? Just to give you a feeling for how important this is to who we are as Presbyterians: part of our Constitution as the Presbyterian Church (USA)—most of it can be amended, because we expect that rules and guidelines will change over time, that we can grow in wisdom, and that practices need to be relevant to the time.

There’s only a small part of our Constitution which cannot be amended. These are the things that we think are pretty timeless, are important, are kind of as close as we can get to universal truths, okay?

And one of them is captured in this phrase: that we fully expect people of good conscience to disagree. That’s an essential part of who we are as Presbyterians.

We expect people of good conscience to disagree.

So didn’t we just read from Paul about having the same mind? A full accord with one mind? What is that if not a like-minded community? And how can we then reconcile our Presbyterian value of diversity of thought with what Paul seemingly upholds here as like-mindedness?

Well, first of all, I would argue that what Paul calls us as Christians to be of one mind—what he really means might be better translated as like-hearted rather than like-minded.

I actually cut out a little piece there of what Paul said. He doesn’t just call us to be of the same mind, he calls us also to be what? Part of the same love.

And then he goes and reminds us of the example that Jesus gave us in his life.

The verses that follow are what scholars call the Christ hymn. And there are many who believe here—this is really interesting, perk up for a minute—there are those who believe that what Paul is quoting here is actually a very, very early Christian hymn.

In fact, this section that’s kind of formatted differently maybe in your pew Bibles is thought to be maybe one of the very earliest pieces of Christian writing: a piece of music. Makes sense, right? It makes sense to them that this hymn is something that would have been known and spread, and that Paul here is just quoting it because he knows the Philippians know it. And so he’s grounding them in what they already know.

But if that’s the case, that’s really interesting, because this little bit shows us a whole lot of what the earliest Christians thought about what it meant to follow Jesus.

Professor Catherine Shaner writes, “The Christ hymn is clear: domination, conquest, exploitation—exactly the patriotic images that the Roman Empire embraced—are antithetical to divine power. Jesus’ death and resurrection reject our human displays of power and violence precisely because we know the divine was present in the worst kinds of violence, fear, stigmatization, and brute force. Violence, fear, and death are not God’s plan.”

But wait a minute.

Isn’t part of this hymn that every knee should bend? On earth and under the earth, at the name that is above all names, Jesus Christ? That sounds a little bit forceful, doesn’t it?

Maybe. I would suggest that we read it that way because that’s our lens. We come out of this lens of thinking about power as domination. But what Paul is doing here is something different.

He’s not saying that every knee shall bend because they will be forced to against their will, but that the vision for all of creation—for all of creation, for all of humanity, for all of it—is that we will be so into the love of God that, in the end, we will all come to realize that that is the greatest power of them all, and not all of our other attempts to amass power and wealth for ourselves, to dominate others through violence and through force.

Now, it would seem to me—and actually not just seem to me, because the Christian nationalist leaders who are organizing and participating in today’s rededication have explicitly said this, and I have quoted them from this pulpit before—that it is their intention to force their brand of Christianity on everyone else.

Matthew Taylor, a religious scholar of the ICJS in Baltimore, has been studying the leaders of this movement for the past five years. You may remember he came here a couple years ago and gave a talk on his book, The Violent Take It By Force, which was his attempt to explain the Christian leaders who were involved in the January 6th insurrection.

About the event today, he writes, “Their goal is not merely Christian nationalism, the claim that the U.S. is especially Christian. It is Christian supremacy, privileging Christianity over other religious and nonreligious worldviews in policy, and offering premium citizenship to their kind of Christian.”

So while at first we may look at this passage and they can find their justification for “every knee shall bow,” look at the rest of the hymn. Look at the rest of the passage. Where is it saying that this will happen by force?

No. God does not work by force, but by attraction.

So what are we to do? How can we make a difference? Should we just moan and complain, wait patiently for the next vote, withdraw from what’s going on in the world and just tend to our own souls, our own like-minded communities? Or do Paul’s words here in Philippians have something more to offer us?

I’ll tell you what—it’s really amazing what happens when you just pay attention, when you just have that. So often, you know, we’re rushing from one thing to the next.

I always have this pause in my morning when I’m out in the car waiting for the kids to come out so I can take them to school. And this happened last week, actually, as I was thinking about this passage and this like-mindedness and this “every knee shall bow,” and I’m thinking, “How am I going to—what am I going to say?”

And two really interesting things happened.

So one was, for some reason—even though 99% of the time I pull into our driveway head first—for whatever reason, and I don’t even remember, it’s like a week ago, I don’t remember why, but I backed into the driveway. So I’m sitting there in the car waiting for a few minutes as the car kind of warms up, and I’m looking outward. Where I would normally be looking toward our backyard, I’m looking out toward the street.

Now, the other thing you need to know is that we live in a neighborhood that has a lot of walkers, a lot of dog walkers, people that walk for exercise, people that run and jog. And so they’re out all the time. And these people—I mean, you can set your watch to them. You know that if you leave at this time of day, I’m going to see this person walking, or I’m going to see this person walking their dog.

And I may know them by name, or I just may recognize them. I may see them every day of the week. That’s how much a part of my life they are. But I don’t really know them. So you get the idea, right?

So I’m there sitting in the driveway, facing out, and this couple walks by. Not unusual, except I don’t recognize them. Never seen them before in my life. So that strikes my curiosity. Who are they? What are these people doing in my neighborhood? No, not really. But, you know, that’s kind of why I paid attention. I’m like, huh.

A couple, I’m going to guess in their sixties. And the remarkable thing is they were walking so in sync. Now, they were walking at a pretty good clip, so I only had about twelve strides that I could see them as they were walking through my view. But this couple, who I assume had been together for a long time, they were walking exactly in sync.

And I’m not exaggerating to say it wasn’t just that the stride of their legs was in sync. I’m talking heel to toe, touching the ground precisely the same.

And I thought to myself—one, I thought, they’ve been together a long time.

And I thought of the long-term couples that I’ve known. I don’t know very many of them that are like-minded. Some that are more like-minded than others, but that’s not what gets them there.

And I realized from this couple that they were in sync in a different way. It wasn’t that they agree on everything, but they’re so used to walking together that, without even thinking about it, their strides just matched up.

And it just hit me. That’s what Paul means. That’s what he’s talking about. That as individuals and communities, our job is to walk with Jesus.

And when we start, we’re not going to be in sync. We’re going to be out of step. But together, the more we do it together, the more in sync we can be.

Not like-minded. Something closer to like-hearted.

As Christians, it is our job to walk in the way of Jesus, who, though he existed in the form of God, did not regard equality with God as something to be grasped, but emptied himself, humbled himself.

And we walk this way not just as individuals, but as communities of faith. We support one another. We encourage one another. We do not force our way of living and our way of thinking on others.

How little faith in God does that take, to force our way on others? If we truly believe and have faith, force is not necessary.

I think what Paul is calling us to is submitting ourselves to love—God’s love for all people.

Together, we try to walk in sync with our Lord and Savior. As we Presbyterians say, as a sign to the world of what God intends for all humanity.

Friends, that’s what we can do. Not hold huge rallies and try to force other people into our way of thinking, but to be a sign here of what can be, to be a community where love and generosity and compassion rule, not power and force.

Walking step by step with Jesus, we can show the power of humility and the strength of love.

Like-hearted, not like-minded.

Amen.

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Fittingly, as we are celebrating the anniversary of this particular congregation we are now in the readings of the early earliest Christians the earliest followers of Jesus as they began to form communities and hash out their differences and what they would look like and all of those things in the book of Acts. We’ve been in this book a couple weeks now It’s kind of like the journal of the earliest apostles. Starting next week, we’re going to start to read some of Paul’s mail in his various writings to the various communities that he’s founded, and we’ll be in Philippians next week. But today, we encounter Paul once again in Acts is in another location in Greece:

Acts 17: 16-34

While Paul was waiting for them in Athens, he was deeply distressed to see that the city was full of idols. So he argued in the synagogue with the Jews and the devout persons and also in the marketplace every day with those who happened to be there. Also some Epicurean and Stoic philosophers debated with him. Some said, “What does this pretentious babbler want to say?” Others said, “He seems to be a proclaimer of foreign divinities.” (This was because he was telling the good news about Jesus and the resurrection.) So they took him and brought him to the Areopagus and asked him, “May we know what this new teaching is that you are presenting? It sounds rather strange to us, so we would like to know what it means.” Now all the Athenians and the foreigners living there would spend their time in nothing but telling or hearing something new. 

Then Paul stood in front of the Areopagus and said, “Athenians, I see how extremely spiritual you are in every way. For as I went through the city and looked carefully at the objects of your worship, I found among them an altar with the inscription, ‘To an unknown god.’ What therefore you worship as unknown, this I proclaim to you. The God who made the world and everything in it, he who is Lord of heaven and earth, does not live in shrines made by human hands, nor is he served by human hands, as though he needed anything, since he himself gives to all mortals life and breath and all things. From one ancestor he made all peoples to inhabit the whole earth, and he allotted the times of their existence and the boundaries of the places where they would live, so that they would search for God and perhaps fumble about for him and find him—though indeed he is not far from each one of us. For ‘In him we live and move and have our being’; as even some of your own poets have said, 

     ‘For we, too, are his offspring.’ 

“Since we are God’s offspring, we ought not to think that the deity is like gold or silver or stone, an image formed by the art and imagination of mortals. While God has overlooked the times of human ignorance, now he commands all people everywhere to repent, because he has fixed a day on which he will have the world judged in righteousness by a man whom he has appointed, and of this he has given assurance to all by raising him from the dead.” 

When they heard of the resurrection of the dead, some scoffed, but others said, “We will hear you again about this.” At that point Paul left them. But some of them joined him and became believers, including Dionysius the Areopagite and a woman named Damaris and others with them. 

For the Word of God in scripture,
For the Word of God among us,
For the Word of God within us,
Thanks be to God.

***

Well, last week Paul was in Philippi with his buddy Silas, and they were getting into trouble. This week Paul is on his own in Athens and seemingly in a much better mood. As Bobby Williamson puts it, though he’s upset by their use of idols, this distress doesn’t lead our notoriously hot-headed Paul to smash any idols or overturn any tables. He goes instead into conversation with a wide range of people. He is curious about their culture and their religious practices. He seeks to find common ground but isn’t afraid to point out when there are real differences. Honestly, this is like a master class in interfaith dialogue, up until the point at the end where Paul blows it by telling them that God is growing impatient with their ignorance and will soon judge them lacking if they don’t convert.

But honestly, we could argue that the Athenians impacted Paul as much as he impacted them. And that’s a good mark of a healthy and productive interfaith dialogue. But it’s clear from Paul’s later writings that he has incorporated some Greek philosophical concepts into his theology, so much so that I think to say that had Paul not stopped by Athens, Christian theology might be very, very different.

Now, really, we can say that about just about anything. There’s this Doctor Who episode called Turn Left. In the episode explores the different paths a person’s life would take if they turned left instead of right at an intersection. And not only their life, but the lives of those around them, as well as following generations.

Really, when we think about it, our whole existence hangs on threads of chance. Countless things had to fall into place just for us to be here. It’s just one different choice, a left turn instead of a right, perhaps, and poof. But we are here, thanks be to God. And Paul did go to Athens and changed them, even as he himself was changed.

And I think that’s a really important lesson for us.

You see, faith is not static. It grows, it evolves, it changes. It can take in new information, and you blend the old with the new, and it becomes something else altogether. In his book, Reading the Bible Again for the First Time, Marcus Borg writes, “The way of Jesus is not a set of beliefs. That people ever thought it was is strange when we think about it, as if one entered new life by believing certain things to be true, or as if the only people who can be saved are those who know the word Jesus. Thinking that way virtually amounts to salvation by syllables. Rather, the way of Jesus is the way of death and resurrection, the path of transition and transformation from an old way of being to a new way of being.”

So really, if we think about it, all we can have is a living, evolving, growing, changing faith. It should be of absolutely no surprise to us that what we were taught in Sunday school as children does not sustain us later in life. We would never be surprised in any other area, would we? But it’s the foundation from which we can grow. It’s the foundation from which our faith evolves. And the same can be said of communities of faith as well.

Today, we celebrate our 125th anniversary as Roland Park Presbyterian Church. And I want to just read you a bit from our website of how our story began.

On May 8, 1900, 11 men and 10 women met in the home of John T. Hill to discuss the idea of forming a Presbyterian church in the then-new Roland Park neighborhood of Baltimore. A committee of five was formed to look into this matter, and seven weeks later, on Thursday, June business and social meeting of local Presbyterians was held in the Women’s Club Room on the second floor of the Roland Park Shopping Center, which is still across the street.

The committee reported that arrangements could be made for the use of the Women’s Club Room for the morning and evening services at the cost of $3 per Sunday, including the use of the piano, organ, and lights. It was felt that a minister could be secured for an annual salary of $1000.

And a building could be obtained at a discount from the Roland Park Company. Plans were presented for a stone structure that could be built for $10,000. The committee continued to work through the summer. On October 4th, arrangements were concluded with the Reverend John Walkup Douglas, who began his ministry at Roland Park on the first Sunday of November. Meanwhile, the Sunday school began on October 21st with John T. Hill as its first superintendent. The Sabbath school, as it was first termed, was held before church with separate classes for boys and girls.

The cornerstone of the church was laid on July 10th. Seventeen months later, on December 6, 1902, dedication services were held. The original sanctuary of the church was done in an auditorium style with a sloping floor and no center aisle. There was a central pulpit, behind which was the choir and an organ console. Throughout these early years, the First Presbyterian Church downtown, which has now become First and Franklin Presbyterian Church, maintained a strong interest in encouraging the new Roland Park church, including an annual contribution.

Pretty cool, huh?

But again, just one different decision and we might not be here, or we might be in a different location. And the same could be said for all of the 125 intervening years. We have been sustained by the decisions and support and prayers and acts of service and faithfulness of so many.

One that stands out to me is Joe Day. Joe was a member of our church when I arrived here. He was an older gentleman. He had sung in the choir for many, many years. But by the time I got to know him, he’d retired from the choir.

What I remember about Joe was his kindness to me. Just about every Sunday he was here, as he was leaving, he would greet me after church and he would say something like, “You sure are a young man, but you’re our pastor.”

This was an affirmation and I took it as such. Joe was one of those memorable, memorable individuals, and when he passed, we grieved our loss.

About six months later, we received a letter. It was from Joe’s attorney, informing us that we were one of two benefactors in his will, the other being his sister. Joe left the church a very generous bequest.

When I informed the session of this, I will never forget the looks on everyone’s face. Because you see, Joe was not a wealthy man. He didn’t have a lot of family. He drove a modest car, lived in a modest apartment, and died in a modest nursing home. He gave no indication that he had the sort of means to leave a gift to the church.

But to Joe, we were his family. And people were touched. And beyond that, they were moved and inspired. And I tell you this because, in my estimation, that was the moment that we started to understand who we are as a small congregation and that we could do great things even though we have limited resources.

His gift, among others, was an impetus for forming our master plan, which eventually led to one renovation, and then to another, which we just completed. It’s not technically done yet, but almost. And so from one point of view, in a very real sense, all that we’ve done since, we can trace to Joe’s gift, given to his church family who loved him and whom he loved.

Now, of course, we could tell this story dozens of times over about others in our congregation, past and present. That’s one of the beauties of a small congregation. Those contributions, whether financial or of self, are so impactful. And we know there have been other gifts since, maybe larger in size. But you see, Joe didn’t have a lot of people to remember him, except for us.

So I thought it was appropriate to remember him this day and say, thank you, Joe. Your memory is a blessing, as is the memory of so many other names who may be running through our minds right now.

You see, we are blessed beyond measure to inherit this place, this mission from those who have gone before us. And we have our opportunity to make our contribution before we pass it on to the next generation.

And so continues the story of transformation, death, resurrection, the old and new coming together to create something that’s never been before.

So friends, as we come to this table today, I invite you to bring someone with you. If you’ve been a member of this congregation for a time, I invite you to bring a dearly departed one like Joe with you. And if you haven’t been here that long, I invite you to bring someone from your own life whose memory is a blessing. And I invite us all to think about all the people in 125 years who have gathered around this table before us, as well as those who will gather around it after us.

Just one different choice, one different turn, and we might not be here, but by the grace of God we are. As Frederick Buechner reminds us, “The grace of God means something like, here is your life. You might never have been, but you are, because the party wouldn’t have been complete without you. Here is the world. Beautiful and terrible things will happen. Don’t be afraid. I am with you. Nothing can ever separate us. It is for you that I created the universe. I love you.”

Friends, isn’t that good news?

Happy 125th, Roland Park Presbyterian Church. Let us come to the table of grace once again. Amen.

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We continue in our journey through the Narrative Lectionary here at Roland Park Presbyterian Church. We follow something called the Narrative Lectionary, which takes us through the narrative arc of scripture.

In this new year, we are in the Gospel of John. We’ve been there for several weeks now, and we’re getting used to John’s world and John’s view of things—and the various themes that John uses in the stories.

And in particular, for today, how focused John is in telling the story of Jesus—how often it is through the vehicle of one-on-one relationships. We saw this over the past several weeks.

The Sunday that we missed was the Sunday with Nicodemus. And then last Sunday was the woman at the well. And those were meant to be kind of read in comparison and contrast. And it’s striking to me how often the relationship in John’s Gospel is the focus.

John 4: 46-54

Then he came again to Cana in Galilee, where he had changed the water into wine. Now there was a royal official whose son lay ill in Capernaum. When he heard that Jesus had come from Judea to Galilee, he went and begged him to come down and heal his son, for he was at the point of death. Then Jesus said to him, “Unless you see signs and wonders you will not believe.”  The official said to him, “Sir, come down before my little boy dies.” Jesus said to him, “Go; your son will live.” The man believed the word that Jesus spoke to him and started on his way.¹ As he was going down, his slaves met him and told him that his child was alive. So he asked them the hour when he began to recover, and they said to him, “Yesterday at one in the afternoon the fever left him.”  The father realized that this was the hour when Jesus had said to him, “Your son will live.” So he himself believed, along with his whole household.  Now this was the second sign that Jesus did after coming from Judea to Galilee.

For the Word of God in scripture,
For the Word of God among us,
For the Word of God within us,
Thanks be to God.

***

‘It’s a radical claim we Christians make—that Jesus is the Son of God, fully human and fully divine,” writes my friend (and former golf partner before he rudely moved out of town), the Reverend Roger Scott Powers. He continues, “Without Jesus, my view of God remains a blurry abstraction—God as mysterious, invisible, creative life force behind the universe. But with Jesus, that blurry, abstract God comes into greater focus. God becomes clearer and more concrete to me. He makes the invisible visible, the infinite finite. With Jesus, I feel closer to God and the divine.”

Now, all four of the Gospel writers claim that Jesus is, as it has been said, a mirror of our humanity and a window into divinity. In other words, Jesus is clearly like us. He has friends and family. He eats and drinks. He travels and talks to people. He experiences emotions.

But they all claim that he is something more as well—that when he speaks, he reveals the mind of God, and when he acts, he shows us the character of God.

We know of John’s fondness for signs. What the other Gospels call miracles, John calls signs. The first occurred at the wedding at Cana. It wasn’t planned, but circumstances—and his mother, if you recall—dictated Jesus’ actions.

When the wine runs out at the wedding, Jesus has them fetch the jars of water for handwashing, and then he instructs the steward to draw water out from the jug. And when he does—it is changed into wine.

And John calls that the first sign.

In today’s reading, Jesus returns to Cana, where a royal official approaches him and asks him to follow him home so Jesus can heal his son.

Jesus tells the man to return home—that his son will indeed live. And the man heads home, only to be met by servants running to tell him the good news—that his son is better after all.

Then, just to make sure that we get it, John tells us that the father asked when the boy’s fever broke—only to find out that it’s precisely the time when he was talking to Jesus.

What are we to make of this?

Healing stories are tricky, aren’t they? Because not all fevers break. Not all sons recover.

Which makes us wonder—is there a criterion for healing? Do we have to have a strong faith? Live the right kind of life? Is it random? Just plain luck? To be in the right place at the right time?

Honestly, the Gospel writers don’t give us much help with these questions. They seem to be just as lost as the rest of us. But they certainly seem to want to take our merit out of the equation.

In other words, they view healing as a gift, not an achievement.

When it does not occur, it does not mean that God withdraws God’s love and care. Quite the opposite—as we’ll soon encounter in John’s Gospel when Jesus’ own friend Lazarus is not spared, and we are told: Jesus weeps.

What stands out to me in this story—and in many of the healing stories we encounter in the Gospels—is that it is often someone else who approaches Jesus on behalf of the one needing healing.

And it’s rather blatant in today’s story, right? Because the boy isn’t even present—far from it. It sounds like he’s about a day’s travel away.

But the father approaches Jesus on behalf of the son. He intervenes. He advocates for him.

And it’s plain to see why—his well-being is wrapped up in his son’s. What impacts that boy impacts the father.

And we see this pattern in the first sign story as well—thinking back to the wedding at Cana. Jesus never touches the water. He never touches the jars. Heck, it wasn’t even his idea in the first place. It was his mother’s idea. Then the servants and stewards did what was asked.

If Jesus is a mirror to our humanity and a window to God’s divinity, then what does this say about God?

Presumably, God can get along just fine without us. But God chooses not to be God without us.

We are brought into the equation not because we are necessary, but because we are God-loved.

In his Letter from a Birmingham Jail, Martin Luther King Jr. writes:

“Human progress never rolls in on the wheels of inevitability. It comes through the tireless efforts of those willing to be co-workers with God. And without this hard work, time itself becomes an ally of the forces of social stagnation. We must use time creatively, in the knowledge that the time is always right to do what is right.”

Friends, we don’t have to save the world. It’s not our job.

But it is our job to love one another—and in so doing, to be co-workers with God for the healing of the world.

It is a radical claim that we Christians make—that God so loved the world that God sent his only Son, not to condemn the world, but that we might have life, and have it abundantly through him.

You know, I don’t know about you, but I used to get really hung up on that title: Son of God—until I realized two things.

The first is that Jesus was not the first one to walk around with that title.

It was the title for Caesar.

So as an early Christian, to claim that Jesus is the Son of God means that Caesar is not.

The other thing I eventually realized is that the title reveals a theological reality, not a biological one.

In that sense, we are all sons and daughters and children of God—even Caesar.

We can acknowledge that someone is broken—and that they are still loved by God.

We can see someone who is so blinded by hate—and still respond in love and kindness, without being a doormat.

Sometimes, the most loving thing to do is simply to ignore someone.

Other times, we must speak the truth in love—and demand accountability.

Friends, we’ve seen evidence that racism and sexism and all sorts of prejudice and hate have made it to the highest office in our country—not for the first time, and maybe not the last.

It’s true, the most recent manifestation seems particularly poignant in our hyper-connected world.

It can feel at times as though the very fabric of our society is being pulled apart.

And what is particularly alarming for me as a person of faith is that it’s all being cloaked in Christianity—a Christianity that I do not recognize, that looks nothing like the Jesus I read about in the Gospels or have experienced through the various communities of faith that have shaped me, including this one.

So friends, what I want to say to you today is really very simple:

Thank you for all the ways that you have been co-workers with God in building up a beloved community in this time and place—and through it, advocating for a more just world.

Furthermore, I want to offer a word of encouragement for us to all keep working.

Keep on loving and advocating for others.

It does make a difference. It does matter.

We must continue to work with God until the day when we all fully recognize, beyond the shadow of any doubt, that every one of us—every last one of us—is a son, is a daughter, is a beloved child of God.

Amen.

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Luke 1:26-56

In the sixth month the angel Gabriel was sent by God to a town in Galilee called Nazareth, to a virgin engaged to a man whose name was Joseph, of the house of David. The virgin’s name was Mary. And he came to her and said, “Greetings, favored one! The Lord is with you.” But she was much perplexed by his words and pondered what sort of greeting this might be. The angel said to her, “Do not be afraid, Mary, for you have found favor with God. And now, you will conceive in your womb and bear a son, and you will name him Jesus. He will be great and will be called the Son of the Most High, and the Lord God will give to him the throne of his ancestor David. He will reign over the house of Jacob forever, and of his kingdom there will be no end.” Mary said to the angel, “How can this be, since I am a virgin?” The angel said to her, “The Holy Spirit will come upon you, and the power of the Most High will overshadow you; therefore the child to be born will be holy; he will be called Son of God. And now, your relative Elizabeth in her old age has also conceived a son, and this is the sixth month for her who was said to be barren. For nothing will be impossible with God.” Then Mary said, “Here am I, the servant of the Lord; let it be with me according to your word.” Then the angel departed from her.

 In those days Mary set out and went with haste to a Judean town in the hill country, where she entered the house of Zechariah and greeted Elizabeth. When Elizabeth heard Mary’s greeting, the child leaped in her womb. And Elizabeth was filled with the Holy Spirit and exclaimed with a loud cry, “Blessed are you among women, and blessed is the fruit of your womb. And why has this happened to me, that the mother of my Lord comes to me? For as soon as I heard the sound of your greeting, the child in my womb leaped for joy. And blessed is she who believed that there would be a fulfillment of what was spoken to her by the Lord.” 

And Mary said,

“My soul magnifies the Lord,
and my spirit rejoices in God my Savior,
for he has looked with favor on the lowly state of his servant.
Surely from now on all generations will call me blessed,
for the Mighty One has done great things for me,
and holy is his name;
indeed, his mercy is for those who fear him
from generation to generation.
He has shown strength with his arm;
he has scattered the proud in the imagination of their hearts.
He has brought down the powerful from their thrones
and lifted up the lowly;
he has filled the hungry with good things
and sent the rich away empty.
He has come to the aid of his child Israel,
in remembrance of his mercy,
according to the promise he made to our ancestors,
to Abraham and to his descendants forever.”

And Mary remained with her about three months and then returned to her home.

For the Word of God in scripture,
For the Word of God among us,
For the Word of God within us,
Thanks be to God.

***

So last month in our adult education forum, we discussed protest songs. We listened to jazz, blues, country, rock and roll, rap, pop, and more. Artists such as Marvin Gaye, Sam Cooke, Bob Dylan, Peter Tosh, Pete Seeger, Cat Stevens, U2, Tracy Chapman, Suzanne Vega, Public Enemy, The Chicks, Taylor Swift, Beyoncé with Kendrick Lamar—protesting things such as war, racism, sexism, greed, commercialism, and more.

Some of these songs are very controversial. They’ve been banned. Some of the older ones, which were banned once upon a time, seem relatively tame by today’s standards. But some are still surprisingly edgy.

Debie Thomas suggests that Mary’s song from Luke could easily take its place among all of these. She writes, “Mary’s song is so subversive in its cultural, socioeconomic, and political implications, it has been banned many times in modern history.”

I didn’t know this—did you?  She writes, “When the British ruled India, the Magnificat was prohibited from being sung in churches. And similarly, during the Dirty War in Argentina, after the mothers of the disappeared children postered the capitol with the words of the Magnificat, the military banned all public displays of the Magnificat. Too much hope, they decided, is a dangerous thing.”

This Advent, we’ve been paying attention to the particular voices of Advent—voices such as John the Baptist and Zechariah. And next week, Special Music Sunday, we’ll put a nice capstone on all of these as we review all the voices that we’ve heard—and add in those angels. I’m not just talking about the choir.

This Sunday, though, we listen to one of the most important voices of them all: Mary’s, the mother of Jesus.

We know remarkably little about Mary. She was a young woman, engaged to be married to Joseph. In Mark and Matthew, she’s not given a voice and really is actually barely mentioned. In John’s gospel, John only refers to her as “the mother of Jesus.” But Luke’s version not only features her, but her cousin Elizabeth.

Judith Jones points out that “women—so often overlooked or ignored in both society at large and in biblical narratives—have the only speaking roles in this vignette.” Remember, Zechariah was mute, right? It’s Elizabeth and Mary going back and forth. Zechariah’s not allowed to talk. And Joseph… just doesn’t.

But you see, the thing, though, is this isn’t new. This isn’t a fresh approach on God’s part. God’s been working this way for a long, long time. We get that sense when we notice that Mary’s song echoes that of Hannah, who we heard earlier in the fall.

Matthew Skinner writes, “Mary’s song invites us to consider how Jesus’ coming reiterates God’s commitment to seek justice, to sustain the world. She’s clear that God is the one who is going to make it happen. The arrival of Christ means change—but it’s change that God has been talking about and working toward already for a very long time.”

God didn’t just wake up one morning and decide to care about justice. From Hannah to Ruth to Michal to Elizabeth and Mary, God has been using the voices of those on the fringes to call to account the rest of us—to remember who God has created us to be: people of justice and joy.

Diana Butler Bass writes, “Why had I never known Advent was a season of justice and joy?” She continues, “You see, justice is not vindictiveness or revenge. In general, justice just means uprightness, equity, fairness. In the Bible, justice refers to the making right of all things. It’s a relational term about living rightly with others and with creation.”

Perhaps we find it too hard to believe that the God of the universe would use a young unwed woman to carry not only the message of salvation but the very life that would make it possible. Why would God choose that particular time and place? Not a king or queen. Not a president or prime minister. Just an ordinary couple in a backwards, forgotten corner of the world. No prestige. No platform. No wealth. Very little power.

But you see, that—according to Luke—is precisely the point. Because God’s coming isn’t once and done. It started long before Mary and Joseph, and it continues to this day.

Notice all the verb tenses in Mary’s song. They’re all in the past tense. And not just the past tense, but it’s a deep past tense that conveys that it’s not just that it has happened but has been happening for a very long time.

Skinner writes, “The story of Jesus’ birth remains a story of divine initiative, but Mary’s consent reminds us that human contributions also play a part.”

You see, this isn’t a story about human accomplishment, nor is it a story of divine takeover because we’ve messed it up so badly. It’s the story of God’s initiative—and our response. God telling us once again how God intends us to live, and reminding us how much we are loved and valued.

But we keep looking to the wrong people, wrong places, for salvation. We keep looking to celebrities and politicians to fix our world, to fix our country, to fix ourselves. We look to the palaces and the halls of power.

Meanwhile, in a small village in Central America, someone just shared their dinner with their neighbor. Or a nurse who just worked a ten-hour shift goes straight home to care for his ailing spouse. Or the young, unwed, pregnant woman checking herself in to the hospital while her fiancé parks the car.

I don’t think that it’s a coincidence that Mary delivers a song and not a speech.

It is Paul, who would come along a few years later, who would write to the church in Corinth: “Each and every one of you has a song.”

There’s Mary’s song, Elizabeth’s song, Zechariah’s and Joseph’s, Hannah’s, yours, and mine.

“So find your voice,” writes Debie Thomas, “and sing your song. And share it with the world.”

What does your Magnificat sound like?
How is God glorified through your own unique perspective and vision?
And what words have you found to express the radical, revolutionary hope of the Messiah you carry?

Friends, we need voices—voices of justice and joy. Voices of Advent. Voices of hope. Audacious hope. Too much hope—the kind of hope that gets you banned.

So what do you say?
Will you share your voice with me?
Will you sing with me?

Not a Christmas carol just yet.
But an Advent tune—the kind that you sing when you begin to sense that God is up to something new…

And has been, for a very long time.

Amen.

The post Voices of Advent: Mary appeared first on Roland Park Presbyterian Church.

We continue with our Advent sermon series on the Voices of Advent, using the book by the same name by Matthew Skinner.

I am going a little rogue this morning. The voice that we are listening to is that of Zechariah. And in Dr. Skinner’s book, he talks primarily about the song that Zechariah sings. But I’m choosing today instead to focus on what came before the song, because I think that that is instructive for us in this Advent season. So we will be reading a portion of Zechariah’s story from the Gospel according to Luke.

And one of the things that I want us to pay attention to, to notice, is the way that the Bible comments on itself.

In this story of Zechariah and his wife, we are going to hear echoes of another familiar story from Genesis. So I’ll just leave that with you so that you listen carefully for that reference.

Let us listen for God’s Word to us today from:  

Luke 1:5-23 

In the days of King Herod of Judea, there was a priest named Zechariah, who belonged to the priestly order of Abijah. His wife was descended from the daughters of Aaron, and her name was Elizabeth. Both of them were righteous before God, living blamelessly according to all the commandments and regulations of the Lord. But they had no children because Elizabeth was barren, and both were getting on in years. 

Once when he was serving as priest before God during his section’s turn of duty, he was chosen by lot, according to the custom of the priesthood, to enter the sanctuary of the Lord to offer incense. Now at the time of the incense offering, the whole assembly of the people was praying outside. Then there appeared to him an angel of the Lord, standing at the right side of the altar of incense. When Zechariah saw him, he was terrified, and fear overwhelmed him. But the angel said to him, “Do not be afraid, Zechariah, for your prayer has been heard. Your wife Elizabeth will bear you a son, and you will name him John. You will have joy and gladness, and many will rejoice at his birth, for he will be great in the sight of the Lord. He must never drink wine or strong drink; even before his birth he will be filled with the Holy Spirit. He will turn many of the people of Israel to the Lord their God. With the spirit and power of Elijah he will go before him, to turn the hearts of parents to their children and the disobedient to the wisdom of the righteous, to make ready a people prepared for the Lord.” Zechariah said to the angel, “How can I know that this will happen? For I am an old man, and my wife is getting on in years.” The angel replied, “I am Gabriel. I stand in the presence of God, and I have been sent to speak to you and to bring you this good news. But now, because you did not believe my words, which will be fulfilled in their time, you will become mute, unable to speak, until the day these things occur.” 

Meanwhile the people were waiting for Zechariah and wondering at his delay in the sanctuary. When he did come out, he was unable to speak to them, and they realized that he had seen a vision in the sanctuary. He kept motioning to them and remained unable to speak. When his time of service was ended, he returned to his home.

For the Word of God in scripture,
For the Word of God among us,
For the Word of God within us,
Thanks be to God.

***

“When I decided to speak, I had a lot to say and in which to say what I had to say.”

These are the words of Maya Angelou in her memoir, I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings. For five whole years as a child, Maya didn’t speak a word. It all started when she was seven. Her mother’s boyfriend—he was arrested, but they released him after only four days. And shortly thereafter, he turned up dead. It was believed that Maya’s uncles were responsible.

“I thought I had caused the man’s death,” she writes, “because I had spoken his name. That was my seven-and-a-half-year-old logic. So I stopped talking for five years.”

Later she writes, “Now, to show you how out of evil there can come good—in those five years I read every book in the Black school library. Out of this evil, which is a dire kind of evil in my case, I was saved by my muteness. I was able to draw from human thought, human disappointments, enough to triumph myself.”

Now, unlike Angelou’s muteness, Zechariah’s inability to speak is not voluntary.

Having been told by an angel that his wife Elizabeth will have a son who is great in the sight of the Lord, Zechariah finds it hard to believe. His doubts have less to do with the abilities of the Almighty and more to do with the fact that, like Abraham and Sarah before them, they’re just past that point in their life.

The angel doesn’t seem to take kindly to Zechariah’s questioning and so strikes him mute until the child is born.

Now as I mentioned, in his book Voices of Advent, Skinner identifies Zechariah as one of the biblical voices of Advent—not for his muteness, but for the song that he sings upon his son’s birth. A song which heralds a Savior—not his son John, but Mary’s child, Jesus.

Skinner writes: “Zechariah shows his awareness of the larger story that is moving forward here. It’s a story about a God who keeps showing up to redeem and deliver.”

It’s fair to wonder whether Zechariah being struck mute is punishment—or something else.

One of my seminary professors, Robert Dykstra, gestures toward some possibilities when he writes:

“Maybe Zechariah’s silence was not so much an imposition of God’s judgment, but of God’s severe mercy. A poignant pause in the cynicism and tragedy and traumas of this world, in which gestates our prayer of wonder and thanksgiving and gratitude in the miracle of new birth.

A son named John.
A son named Jesus.
A redemption, and refreshment, and restoration of hope and life.
A severe mercy.
A healing silence.”

But of course, not all silences are healing.

Psychologist Michelle Leno writes, “In our fast-paced, hyper-connected world, silence can feel unnatural. Whether we’re scrolling through social media or engaged in a conversation, we’re used to constant stimulation. Quiet moments interrupt the rhythm, leaving us face to face with our thoughts—and sometimes, that’s the last place we want to be.”

It’s true, though. Some silences can be quite disturbing.

The silence of the home after a loved one dies, for example. Or that of an empty home after a divorce, or a child goes off to college.

In fact, many of us prefer white noise to drown out the silence—because of all the silence might say to us.

In her book When God Is Silent, Barbara Brown Taylor writes:

“Many words—silence affects people who are no longer affected by sound. Plenty of us who are defended against sound have no defense against silence.”

But Zechariah’s silence isn’t just a personal crisis. Lest we forget, Zechariah is a priest. It is literally his job to speak for God.

His silence could lead to a crisis of faith in the community. Is God angry at the people? Why is God giving them the silent treatment? What might the silence be saying?

French philosopher Max Picard says that “silence is the central place of faith—where we give the word back to the God from whom we first received it. Surrendering the word, we surrender the medium of our creation. We unsay ourselves, voluntarily returning to the source of our being, where we must trust God to say us once again.”

And so it just may be that of all the voices that we hear during Advent, silence says the most.

It lays us utterly bare before God and one another. It reveals our fears and insecurities and sends us inward to reflect and repair.

Michelle Leno writes: “While silence may be uncomfortable, it doesn’t have to be negative. In fact, those quiet pauses can offer valuable opportunities—if we’re willing to embrace them.”

When Zechariah finally spoke again, he had many things to say and many ways in which to say them.

In his first words, a song of peace and blessing, proclaiming God’s love for the whole world.

Friends, as we sit at this table today, let us embrace the opportunity to quiet our hearts and minds so that we may hear what God is saying to us.

The song that is welling up inside of each and every one of us.

The song of a Savior’s love.
A song about a God who keeps showing up to redeem and deliver.
A song of a world made new.

Amen.

The post Voices of Advent: Zechariah appeared first on Roland Park Presbyterian Church.

Mark 1:1-8

The beginning of the good news of Jesus Christ.

As it is written in the prophet Isaiah, 

“See, I am sending my messenger ahead of you,
who will prepare your way,
the voice of one crying out in the wilderness:
‘Prepare the way of the Lord;
make his paths straight,’ ”

 so John the baptizer appeared in the wilderness, proclaiming a baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of sins. And the whole Judean region and all the people of Jerusalem were going out to him and were baptized by him in the River Jordan, confessing their sins. Now John was clothed with camel’s hair, with a leather belt around his waist, and he ate locusts and wild honey. He proclaimed, “The one who is more powerful than I is coming after me; I am not worthy to stoop down and untie the strap of his sandals. I have baptized you with water, but he will baptize you with the Holy Spirit.”

For the Word of God in scripture,
For the Word of God among us,
For the Word of God within us,
Thanks be to God.

***

With Thanksgiving and the start of Advent being back-to-back this year, it occurred to me that Advent is like the morning before the big Thanksgiving meal: you don’t just go about your normal routine, it is all about how you prepare yourself. In his book Voices of Advent, Matthew Skinner reminds us that Christian holidays are also called “feast days” in the church. He writes, “Feasts usually need to be preceded by an extended period of fasting…For one…, it takes work to prepare a feast and moderation to save the food you need for a supersized party. That was especially true for people in medieval Europe, because food was relatively scarce in December. Another reason is less practical and more spiritual: Abstaining from food—either entirely or in moderation—is considered by many an exercise in religious devotion meant to deepen a person’s sense of reliance on God alone. Fasting was not viewed as punishment but as something that can benefit your spiritual vitality and help prepare you for all that Christmas declares about God’s reliability and generosity.”

In Advent we prepare for Christmas. Not preparation as in shopping, decorating and cooking, but as in anticipation, longing and introspection—deepening our sense of reliance on God alone. The call of Advent is to pay attention to where it hurts, where the world is not right, and where we need healing, even dare we say, saving. Because before we celebrate the birth of our savior, it’s important to remember that we need one.

Which is why one of the first voices we hear during Advent is that of John the Baptist. Skinner calls John “one of the most peculiar figures in the Bible, and that’s saying something.” He appears in all four Gospels, as a herald and precursor for Jesus. We read Mark’s version today, which is the simplest. Luke gives us the fullest account. Matthew and John are somewhere in between but add their own unique flare.

Mark’s “Gospel gets right to the point,” writes Skinner, “beginning the whole story of Jesus with a short description of John…drawing from the Old Testament to give us a sense of [his] significance…John’s voice in Mark, along with John’s wardrobe and location, declares that a time of disruption is coming. John characterizes the public arrival of Jesus as an occasion marked by a divine intrusion and expression of God’s power.”

“Since we now live in a society—and a world—that is fitfully drifting toward fascism, the breaking of silence is altogether urgent,” writes Walter Brueggeman. “In the institutional life of the church, moreover, the breaking of silence by the testimony of the gospel often means breaking the silence among those who have a determined stake in maintaining the status quo.” In other words, those who have a voice have a responsibility to use it. But too often we stay silent!

“We need John’s voice in Advent,” writes Skinner. “As the Gospels tell their stories, John is also vital for setting Jesus in the context of agitation and protest. John expresses dissatisfaction with the current state of affairs. He’s eager for God to inject new life and forgotten convictions into the world. John leads us to reflect on our own expectations and frustrations. John urges us to get ready.”

The getting ready of Advent, the fasting before the feast, is removal of all the ways we deny, pretend, or otherwise ignore the state of affairs around us and within us. Before German pastor and theologian Dietrich Bonhoeffer was martyred by the Nazi regime, he wrote, “The coming of God is truly not only a joyous message, but is, first, frightful news for anyone who has a conscience … God comes in the midst of evil, in the midst of death, and judges the evil in us and in the world.”

***

              A friend of mine is going through some things. The specifics don’t matter, because we’ve all been there. There are just times in life that are like that. It isn’t a matter of blame or guilt. Whether you are in control of the circumstances or not isn’t really important either. All that matters is that things aren’t right.

Of course, this is the very same time that everyone asks, “Are you alright?” or simply states, “Don’t worry. Everything will be okay.” To the first, you want to say “No, of course I am not alright.” To the second, you want to shout, “You don’t know that everything will be okay.”

Advent is the Christian calendars way of saying, “It’s okay not to be okay.” To my friend going through some things I said, “Of course you are not alright right now. No one would be in your circumstances.” Sometimes all we can do is acknowledge that things are not alright at the moment and might not be for some time. As Christians we can do this, without losing hope in God’s future and God’s promises. Rather Advent reminds us just how deep our hope runs.

The Right Rev. Maryanne Budde, the bishop of the Episcopal Diocese of DC, who famously pleaded with President Trump in her homily at his inauguration, recently traveled to Europe. The trip was part personal, to take her mother’s remains to be buried with her parents and part professional; she was giving a book talk in Sweden.

About her time oversees she writes, “The people I met in Europe wanted to talk about life in the United States, and I was moved by the depth of their concern. The question I was most frequently asked was some variation of “What is life like for you in America now?” While I didn’t presume to speak for all Americans, I tried to describe the fullness of our life, alongside the sober realities that make international headlines…The second most frequent question I was asked in Europe was “Where do you find your hope?” That was easier to answer. My hope is in Jesus, crucified and risen. No matter how I feel on a given day, Jesus has given me a path to walk and his light to see by. It is the way of love.” Then she wrote this, “When I falter and lose hope, others walking the path beside me become my hope bearers. I look to the example of those wondrous human beings across our world whose sacrificial love is like light shining in darkness.”

That’s it! Advent calls us to be hope bearers. To use our voice to tell the truth. We are not okay. Our world is broken and so are we. We have not loved God with our whole heart. We have not loved one another as God has loved us. We have done that which we should not and left undone that which we should have done. But we do not lose hope because God is not done with us yet! Before every feast, there’s a famine. So we pray, may the full feast of God’s justice come and come soon. While we wait Lord, come. Amen.

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Isaiah 9:1-7

But there will be no gloom for those who were in anguish. In the former time he brought into contempt the land of Zebulun and the land of Naphtali, but in the latter time he will make glorious the way of the sea, the land beyond the Jordan, Galilee of the nations. 

The people who walked in darkness

    have seen a great light;

those who lived in a land of deep darkness—

    on them light has shined.

You have multiplied exultation;

    you have increased its joy;

they rejoice before you

    as with joy at the harvest,

    as people exult when dividing plunder.

For the yoke of their burden

    and the bar across their shoulders,

    the rod of their oppressor,

    you have broken as on the day of Midian.

For all the boots of the tramping warriors

    and all the garments rolled in blood

    shall be burned as fuel for the fire.

For a child has been born for us,

    a son given to us;

authority rests upon his shoulders,

    and he is named

Wonderful Counselor, Mighty God,

    Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace.

Great will be his authority,

    and there shall be endless peace

for the throne of David and his kingdom.

    He will establish and uphold it

with justice and with righteousness

    from this time onward and forevermore.

The zeal of the Lord of hosts will do this. 

For the Word of God in scripture,

For the Word of God among us,

For the Word of God within us,

Thanks be to God.

***

Now, I know I haven’t been the sharpest this morning already—with my Easter blunder there—but you’re probably wondering again if I have my dates mixed up, if I’m somehow confused. Why are we reading a Christmas Eve text before Thanksgiving?

Are we, as the Church, going the way of big business, starting Christmas observances earlier and earlier each year?

Don’t worry, you still have time.

We are actually reading these familiar words from Isaiah 9 more in their proper context. What I mean is, these words were not originally written about Jesus. They were written well before his time. And remember, prophets are not people that have special access to the future. Rather, they are people who have supreme trust in God’s future. Prophets are not fortune tellers.

Most scholars believe that the words of Isaiah 9 were written for a coronation of a new king, one that perhaps everybody was excited about. Scholars think maybe Hezekiah. During a time when Israel was at war—probably with Assyria—one biblical scholar, Charles Aaron Jr., writes: “The poem expresses deep political desires of the human heart. It presents a doctrine of a top-down picture of a leader who combines the best qualities of any person in authority. The leader displays wisdom, strength, concern for the poor, justice, and facilitates relationships, righteousness.”

Professor Mark Hamilton writes: “How do we speak of hope in a world filled with terror?” A solution eluded them then because centuries punctuated by war, forced migration, resettlement, and all the accompanying tragedies kept generating dialogue about the work of God in such a world.

For a while now, people in the biblical narrative have put their hope in kings. First in Saul, and then in David, and then in Solomon. And then we remember, things got so tumultuous that the kingdom split into the Northern and Southern Kingdom. And that’s where we are now.

And so these people are going through these traumatic times. There are pressures from other nations. There are pressures from inside. And once again, people are looking for a place to put their hope, a way out of this darkness.

Remember, this is a time when light is so important. A candle that lasts the night means safety and warmth and all of these things. But Professor Hamilton also writes, “Even if, as many scholars think, this poem originated in this context and is about this royal coronation, the placement of the text in this larger context allows it to mean more.”

It’s this hope-filled language that points to worlds not confinable to a single moment, and they trigger new imagination.

I love that. New imagination.

We don’t often think of going to the Bible for new imagination, do we? New insight? No, that’s old imagination and old insight. But no, right here in Isaiah, we have an example of new insight, new ideas about God. We’re allowed to do that. Did you know that?

We can use new ideas and images for God. That’s allowable. You could do that.

Aren’t we supposed to stick with what we have, though? Isn’t it somehow watering down God’s word when we mix it with our own?

What we sometimes forget is that all of our language about God is metaphor. All of it is symbol. All of it is story—a way of talking about God.

And so whatever we say about God, whatever our speech is about God, it’s always incomplete.

Barbara Brown Taylor puts it so beautifully. She says, “Our words are fragile, but oh what gorgeous sounds our failures make. Words flung against silence like wine glasses pitched against a wall. As lovely as they are, they’re meant for smashing. For when they do, it’s as if a little of God’s own music breaks through.”

In other words, when we speak of God, it is our humility—and not our certainty—which gets us closer to the truth.

There’s the big one, right? And we even get it a little bit in this passage: “Son of God.” We call Jesus Son of God. And we’ve taken this literally. And this is a hurdle for so many people that I know—that this title, this word, this phrase—we’ve turned it into something literal. We say Jesus is God’s only son.

But what do we mean by that? And what did they mean by that? And what might we mean by that?

The truth is that “Son of God” is not meant to convey a biological reality, but a theological one. It’s meant to help us understand how God and Jesus are related to one another—how they’re the same and yet different—how they’re one and yet many.

And so many in the ancient world related to them as a parent and a child—a father and a son. It’s a relationship of caring and sharing. If it had been a different kind of relationship that they meant to convey—one that was more hierarchical—they could have chosen something different, right? Ruler and subject. Boss and apprentice.

But the one that dominated—the one that has persisted—is parent and child, father and son, which is a more loving relationship.

So do you see how acknowledging that we don’t mean it literally doesn’t take power away from it? It actually lends credence to it. It gives it more depth. And it makes it more useful.

And theological language needs to be useful. If it’s not useful, what good is it?

Our language about God should bring us closer to God—not set barriers between us and God—not push us further away. It needs to shed light on the idea of God, not obscure it further in darkness.

A few weeks ago in adult education, we were talking—I don’t even remember exactly the subject—but I talked about it as if God’s love and God’s justice were like radio waves or some kind of wave constantly bombarding the earth. They’re always there. It’s always there for us to access. But we’re not always tuned into it, right? We’re not always tuned into the right frequency.

I said, well, we can think of Jesus as like a satellite dish. Jesus was always tuned in to that frequency—to God’s justice vision. It’s always there, but we don’t always receive it. But we can look to Jesus to interpret it for us.

Some people found that helpful. Some people were like, “Oh, I didn’t know we could do that. Are we allowed to do that?”

Another example I used to use—some of you won’t get this because you’re too young—but I used to talk about Jesus in the Gospels—in Matthew and Mark and Luke—was like… you remember a dial-up modem? You couldn’t be on the phone and the internet at the same time. Matthew and Mark and Luke, Jesus is like that with God. There’s a connection. It just takes a little while. It’s a little slower.

Whereas in John, it’s like DSL. Remember when DSL came? You could be on the phone and the internet and it was quicker. You know, you could download something. You didn’t… you didn’t have all the noises.

Well, so that was helpful—but it’s already, that analogy is already outdated.

I feel like that’s what we can do with our… and you all can come up with a lot better ones than I can. But that was one that was helpful to me to get that point across. It made it useful, right?

And there’s been a whole lot of discussion in recent decades over the predominantly male language for God that heavily emphasizes God as Father, right? And the case for this is strengthened when we notice how often Jesus himself uses this metaphor for God—notably using the overly familiar “Abba,” which is not just “Father,” but “Daddy.” It’s much closer.

Additionally, when Jesus is asked to pray, he tells his disciples to pray addressing what? God as “our Father.” And what we might miss now is how innovative that was at the time—that Jesus would go around referring to God as “Father” or “Daddy.” I’m sure more than a few religious gatekeepers criticized him for that: “He’s changing the language about God. He’s making it overly familiar. He should stick to what we have.”

But today, now, “Father” sometimes can be a little off-putting for people. Not everyone has a loving relationship with their father. “Father” means someone who is emotionally distant—maybe even cruel—maybe absent.

So do we just stop using “Father”? Do we throw it out?

No. But maybe we use it a little bit less. And maybe we mix it with other metaphors. And that’s why I begin the Lord’s Prayer the way I do—not because I want to change the tradition—but because tradition itself doesn’t use just one metaphor for God, but many.

That’s what the Bible does. Father. Mother. Rock. Redeemer. Savior. Lord. Friend. Companion. Guide. River. Lamb. Lion. Eagle. Protective mother hen.

These are just a few of the titles—the words—the metaphors that the Bible uses to address God, to refer to God.

As one of my mentors once said to me, “As Christians, our job is not just to believe what scripture says. It’s to do what the Bible does.” The Bible uses many names and metaphors for God—not just one. And it uses not just the old traditional ones—the ones that people are familiar with—it uses new and innovative ones as well.

So maybe it’s not just permissible for us to do so. Maybe we’re supposed to.

Now I started by saying—and maybe this caught some of you off guard, maybe some of you knew it—that the original author wasn’t referring to Jesus when he uses all these words: Wonderful Counselor, Mighty God, Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace. We call Jesus “Prince of Peace,” right?

So what does it mean to say, “No, no, in Isaiah 9, not referring to Jesus but Hezekiah”? Who’s Hezekiah to us, right?

Does that mean we don’t follow Jesus?

No, of course not.

Acknowledging this doesn’t lessen its impact for us as Christians—quite the opposite.

You see, part of what I’m trying to show us is—we don’t have to trample on other traditions to uphold our own.

It’s important to recognize that first and foremost, this is a Hebrew text—written for the Hebrew people in their understanding of God. But it is also true that for us as Christians—for millennia—we have found Jesus in these words.

That’s to say, where people once put their hope in kings and warriors to save us—for many of us, once we met Jesus, once we heard him preach of God’s love, once we saw him heal the sick, embrace the outcast, challenge political and religious leaders of his day—we said, “That’s what a real king should look like.” That’s the type of ruler that we want.

One who leads from love and stands for justice. One who is not propping himself up at the expense of others.

So we can acknowledge that this is a Hebrew text and that it was not originally referring to Jesus. But we can also acknowledge that as Christians we have found him in these words. And that is where we place our hope.

It’s very interesting that Hebrew doesn’t have a past tense and a future tense. It has a perfect tense and an imperfect tense—something that has been completed and something that is yet to be completed.

When the author of Isaiah talks about this time in the future where peace will come—where we’ll no longer have need of the things of war, where we’ll have turned them into other things, where we are led by love, where righteousness and justice are not just constant—the author of Isaiah 9 says, “This is already completed. It just hasn’t happened yet.”

Being so sure of God’s future that even though it hasn’t happened, we know it’s going to—and so that is what we work ourselves toward.

So as we head into this season—one of thanksgiving and anticipation and hope—we’re going to hear a lot of different words for God. Different names. Different metaphors. Different language for Jesus and the reign of God.

May they not only enrich the message of God’s love and peace and justice, may they be a reminder for us to do what scripture does—to find new ways to communicate and show and make real and make tangible this gospel that we proclaim in word and deed, that the world may grow more and more into the likeness of the Holy who cannot be contained by our language but who invites us to try nonetheless.

Because in our trying—and even in our failing—we move ever closer to this ineffable mystery that we call God. This love in which we live and move and have our being.

Amen.

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