Magnification

Luke 1. 30-55

I don’t know about you, but I’ve been a bit busy this week. I’ve been taking care of details. There were worship services to organize and people to visit. There was a session meeting and a meeting with some pastors from Woodlawn (we’re starting to work together on some things). I checked on my plane ticket and wrapped presents and figured out how to carry the presents on the plane to take to the people in Texas…Well, anyway, you get the ideas, there are a lot of details.

When I turned to the text, I found another abundance of details there, as well. There is the visitation of Mary by Gabriel and the visitation of Elizabeth by Mary. There is the prenatal witness of John the Baptist to the coming of the prenatal Jesus and Elizabeth’s benediction. Not to mention Mary’s song. So much caught my attention in the text, which is good since I have some thirty-plus years ahead of me to preach about it, but what caught my attention most, this year, was the magnification.

So, when I started thinking about the sermon and what I wanted to talk about, a story came to mind. It’s a story from my grandparent’s farm, so it’s a summer story not a Christmas story. There aren’t really any Christmas stories from the farm except the time my Granddad and I tipped over backwards in a chair, but that might have been Easter and anyway, I’m sure you’ll hear about that in some other sermon some day. The thing I was thinking of was not really story so much as an object I remember. It’s something that might have helped me this week as my To Do list grew fuzzy in my head and the details of the week began to grow hazy.

On my grandparents’ farm my brother and I had the run of the place, as long as we were outside and not getting into trouble. My grandmother wanted no part of us playing in the house. Her sort of philosophy of grandchildren was that there were acres of land to play on and sunlight to burn so we had better get outside, or play quietly in a room out of sight. So I’m not sure how I came upon it one day, but I found the greatest treasure among my grandmother’s things in her desk. There amongst her useless things, pins, stamps, and ledger books, I found it.

It was big and heavy. It had a wooden handle turned out of the most lovely exotic wood with a brass knob at one end. The other end held a loop of brass hugging a disk of glass. The glass was large and thick. It was three and a half to four inches across. Turned one way it made everything seem small and distant. Turned the other way it made things appear close and clear. When my brother held it to his face his eye grew large and filled the glass, like a cartoon character looking for clues. It was fantastic. It was my great-grandfather’s looking glass or magnifying glass.

I realize now why I was not allowed to play with it, but it was so irresistible at the time. I wanted nothing more than to explore the world with this magnifying glass. I wanted to take it out in the back yard to see a trail of ants up close and personally or take it into the garden to examine the leaves. I wanted to take it everywhere. But the glass stayed inside, safely tucked into my grandmother’s desk drawer.

For my great-grandfather, the glass was not a play thing. My great-grandfather did not have the benefit of lasik or even cataract surgery. There was no help for him when his eyes grew weary from age. I’m sure my great-grandfather had the glass because a magnifying glass was cheaper than a pair of glasses. For him, this glass was far more than a toy, it was a lens through which to view the world with greater clarity than his own eyes would afford.

Magnifying glasses lend clarity to everything you see. A magnifying glass can make what is not clear clear. What he could not see plainly with his own eyes…what blurred to fuzz and haze as he looked at it, my great-grandfather viewed through the magnifying glass. The glass cleared the haze to reveal what was behind it. What my great-grandfather could not see because it seemed too far away, the magnifying glass made seem near. It brought the text to his eyes so that he could read. The glass made clear the detail that had been there all of the time.

Mary had been visited by the angel Gabriel who told her she had found favor with God and that she would conceive and bear a son, the Son of Man, the Son of God. Having learned this, she went to her cousin Elizabeth for consolation and commiseration. Elizabeth, too, was pregnant. She would know what Mary should do, what to tell her family, what to tell Joseph. Elizabeth was older and wiser, she would know.

After the arduous trip and so many miles to ponder things, Mary could not have accounted for the greeting she received from Elizabeth. At the sight of her, the baby John the Baptist, leapt in Elizabeth’s belly and Elizabeth, “filled with the Holy Spirit”, proclaimed a benediction upon Mary. She called her blessed, which the unmarried woman wasn’t particularly feeling at the moment, and Elizabeth called her child blessed as well. It was unheard of, as far as Mary knew, to call a baby conceived out of wedlock blessed, but Elizabeth had.

Mary, in the community of Elizabeth found comfort from the shock of her surprising news. And she found confidence from Elizabeth’s word’s of favor. Having visited Elizabeth, Mary was able to face the task for which she had been called and to which she had said to the Lord, “here am I.” Mary’s stress and concern, about her future, about what people would think, about raising such a child, all of it gave way and was transformed into joy and thanksgiving. In Elizabeth’s joy Mary could see her way to her own joy. Elizabeth offered Mary clarity.

Now it was Mary’s turn to offer praises. She opened her mouth to sing a song of thanksgiving to God. She proclaimed the magnificat. “My soul magnifies the Lord,” she said. Her soul magnifies…the Lord.

In Mary, we peer through a looking glass at the Lord. She gives us access to God by offering our praises to the Lord. She proclaims the thanksgivings that are ours. Mary speaks of the great things God has done for her. Like the Old Testament prophets before her, she proclaimed the mighty works God had done for Israel. She spoke of the God’s mercy and God’s strength. Mary proclaimed God’s power and kindness. And she proclaimed God’s faithfulness in keeping the covenant made with Abraham. Mary points to her in-opportune pregnancy as yet further evidence of God’s love, care, and mercy toward God’s people. Because of what God has done, Mary gives praise for what is being done in her and for what will be done for the world by the infant she carries. Through her praise and song, Mary draws us closer to our God. She helps us to see God more clearly and understand God’s character more fully.

But even more than that, more than the song Mary lifts, Mary magnifies the Lord through her participation in the incarnation. Mary brings God near to us in the person of her infant, son Jesus. Through Mary’s we gain access to God’s reconciliation brought by Jesus. In the little child Mary bore, God’s love for God’s people was made manifest in the world. God reached out to us from the haze of our limited understanding and became clearer to us, in Jesus, the son of Mary.

On this, the last shopping day before Christmas, the last day of preparation for Santa’s visit, the last day before the Christmas meal, the last day before the world will be changed forever by the birth of a vulnerable infant, it is a good day to stop and draw the old magnifying glass out of the desk drawer of odds and ends.

With glass in hand, no longer are we distracted by the haze of the world and the blur of our lives. On this day, as we await the birth, we hold the glass to our faces and our vision is cleared, we can see, in Jesus, the one who has reached out to us.

In Mary, on this day, amidst all of the cloud of all the details, the glorious goodness of our God extending toward us is made clear by the lowly wowan and her yet unborn child.

Who Are We?

Luke 3.1-6


When I begin to write a sermon, before I write anything…when I’m re-reading the text and reading commentaries, as I explore the scripture I look at it from different angles to see what excites me and what I find confusing and I try to figure out who we are in the passage. I mean, I wonder who I am in the passage and who you are. I want to know who we as Dickey Memorial are and who the PC(USA) is in the text and sometimes, when I am thinking very expansively, I wonder who we the Church are, who the church universal is in the passage.

It’s hard to find us in the text when what we find is the ruling structure of ancient Palestine and regional priests and a guy who we know is wearing a camel’s hair tunic, even though Luke doesn’t mention it. Who are we in this passage? Where are we in this thread of a story about a wilderness guy talking about a guy to come?

Well, I can tell you who I don’t want to be. I don’t want to be Tiberius, who is president and trying to lead this country. And I don’t want to be Pontius Pilate, governor of Maryland, because, let’s face it, we know how he turns out. I don’t want to be Herod, the mayor of Baltimore, nor the mayor of Bethesda or Gaithersburg or Cumberland either, that’s a daunting task that comes with a big headache. And I sure don’t want to be poor ole John the Baptist, back another year to come out of the wilderness of West Virginia in his flannel shirt and overalls to the metropolitan area to proclaim a whole new world in the same ole world that was left after the last time he came around. I don’t want to be that guy.

For sure, since his last visit, there have been little glimpses of transformation that could be seen. India and Pakistan are discussing a peaceful resolution to the dispute of the Kashmir region. Israel returned portions of the West Bank to Palestine and for a moment there was accord. And the Iraqi government was given political control of their country as a fulfillment of a promise. But hope for peace disintegrated under the weight of discord when bombs were wafted, once again. Poor ole John returns to the scene and to find that he has a tough row to hoe.

Despite it all, John does it year after year. No matter which Gospel is a given year’s Advent focus, John emerges from the edge of society, from the margins to prophesy to the center, and then disappears, for the most part, until next December rolls around. He keeps coming with the same message. In the age of sound bites and Up-to-the-Minute information, John keeps coming at us like a cable news channel with one story and hours of air-time to fill. Year after year John proclaims change. He proclaims the world transformed.
John walks off the farm and onto the street corner and bellows forth:
“Make a road for the Lord in the depressed areas, and make it straight.
Every low place shall be filled in,
And every hill and high place shall be pushed down.
And the curves shall be straightened out
And the washboard road scraped smooth.
Then every human being will share in the good things of God."[1]
John stands there for everyone to see and hear, unembarrassed about the spectacle he creates as he proclaims transformation for the world that does not want to change. So, I sure don’t want to be him.

But each year, at this time, I am faced with the reality that I am John the Baptist. We are John the Baptist. We the Church and we the members of DMPC are called to be prophets in the world. We are called to come from the margins, from the perspective of hope and faith, to the cynical and secular heart of society.

Even when we can see it growing year by year, the church is called to be John the Baptist in the face of the economic machine that has absconded with the glorious celebration of the birth of our savior and salvation. We are called to be agents of change in the face of the inequitable infrastructures of the world. We are called to bellow forth on the street corners of our lives proclaiming the good news of the one who is to come. The one who has come. We are to stand there boldly, with out concern for the spectacle we may create, unembarrassed by the good news we proclaim.

Cherry Marshall was telling us this week, in Bible study, about her son’s high school basketball team. Her son, like his father, is a naturally gifted athlete, so, when he made the basketball team, Cherry and the rest of the family had certain hope that that year would be different than the last. The team was coming off of a two year loosing streak. It wasn’t just that they had lost more games than they had won. For two years the team did not win a single game, not even one. In the boy-athlete, the Marshall family saw the answer to the problem. He would, surely join the team and lead it to victory.

The team began their practices, running drills and learning defensive zone and man-to-man strategies. They practiced long and hard for their first game, as every high school team does. When the first game arrived, the team took the court with confidence. They strode about and ran their pre-game shot drills and warmed their bodies to task at hand and prepared their minds for the game to be played.

From the tip-off the game was a loosing prospect for the team. They lost control of the ball and never again had command of the game. Even with Cherry’s son on the court, the new season looked just like the last. Cherry cheered and the other fans cheered and still they lost the game.

As each game came by, the players showed up for practice and prepared for the game with the certain hope of a victory. As the season progressed, the team played and gained strength and skills and confidence. At each game, the fans donned the team colors and turned out to cheer. They shouted and bellowed forth, though the outcome didn’t much seem to change each time. All season they did not win a single game, but it never stopped their preparation.

Who are we? We are not, for the most part, the existing political infrastructure or high priests of the land. Having been baptized by the Holy Spirit, we are not the masses flocking to the riverside to be dunked by the prophet as “a symbol of a changed way of life as the basis for getting things straightened out”[2] We are the faithful fans of the Lord cheering on Jesus’ return. We are John the Baptist, come out of the wilderness to proclaim the good news.

Year by year we open the doors of our advent calendars and anxiously away the day that the baby will be born to change the world.

Year by year, we lead the children in performing the Christmas Pageant, and, in turn, they will lead us in worship. And they will reawaken in us a childlike awe of the greatest story ever told.

Year by year we light the Advent candles and sing the hymns and set the stage for the magnificent transformation of the world.

We root for the transformation to come and bellow forth that it is close at hand. Each year the world looks much the same as the past. But we continue to make the preparations because we are the prophets of the land.

We come from the secular wilderness to faithfully proclaim the world transformed.

We are John the Baptist preparing the way of the Lord with certain hope in the new age to come.

[1] Jordan, Clarence. Luke 3.1, The Cotton Patch Gospel.
[2] Jordan, Charles. Luke 3.1, The Cotton Patch Gospel.

Intervention

Luke 21.25-36

Intervention, vv25-28
Last Sunday night I found myself watching a reality show. I sat in front of my TV and watched a train wreck. I’m not one for reality shows in general. I’m a fan of plot lines and dialogue and I like my TV reality filtered through Friends or ER or Lost or, at the very least the Real World or, in a weak moment, I Want to Marry a Brady, which are more surreal than real. I’ve never seen more than a few minutes of The Bachelor or American Idol. I don’t even watch Dancing with the Stars. But on Sunday night I found myself watching an A&E show called Intervention. It’s a difficult show to watch, but it’s a difficult show to turn off, as well. It is a mixture of intense pain and immense hope.

The show begins with the portrait of a person in trouble. These are real people who have put an loyalty to something above their allegiance to everything else in the world, including themselves.

The series shows a wide spectrum of different addictions. Last week there was a gambling addict, Gabe. He had allowed money to gain power over every aspect of his life. He was unable to make rent payments and pay bills. He had borrowed money in the thousands from family and when those wells had dried-up, he turned to friends and lost their money, too. This man was raking up financial debts with debt collectors and debts of generosity with loved one, all of which he had no chance of repaying.
Finally Gabe’s friends and family could no longer bear to see him suffer at his own hands. Out of their love and caring for him, they decided they could no longer sit back and allow Gabe to destroy his life. His friends and family decided they would cease to be a part of his self-destruction by enabling him through giving money and ignoring the problem. Because of their compassion toward him, they decided to intervene in Gabe’s life so that the cycle of violence he perpetrated upon himself would end.

On his part, it was a dramatic, unexpected meeting, an ambush, almost. Once in the room with his friends and family, once told why he had been invited, one would have hoped that Gabe would recognize their love for him and change his ways. But he was less than receptive to their plan. He was angry at their attempt to interrupt the rhythm of his life and at their audacity to demand change in his life. He was so entrenched in his life the way it was that he could not conceive of changing. He liked what his addiction did for him. He enjoyed the rush of the way he was living his life. Gabe was so wedded to his existence that when an avenue for change was presented to him, he did not desire to take it.

Had his friends and family asked individually, as surely they had, he would not have listened. Only something magnificently different from the ordinary would have gotten his attention at all. It took a dramatic act to get his attention. An act in which was intertwined judgment and salvation. In prepared statements they detailed for him the impact of his actions. They judged and disapproved of the way he destroyed his life and theirs. They were statements not easy to read, but read out of love for him and a desire for a better life for him. They could see a future different from the past, but first they had to name the failings of the past, all of which he did not want to hear.

When friends and family had offered their judgment made with love and compassion, they offered him salvation through rehabilitation paired with their love and support. Their strategy was not merely to end the existing behavior, but create new, life-affirming behavior. They desired to create a new reality for Gabe so that he was no longer tied to the destruction of his current life, but could look to the hope of a new and clean life to come.

At the end of the gospel of Luke, Jesus stood and told the disciples what they did not want to hear. He told them that, their current life, the life they lived without knowing any other way of life, the life they lived desiring no other, the life they lived with loyalties put before their allegiance God, the life that wrought their own destruction and that of the world…Jesus told the disciples that the life they lived could not continue as it was. He told them that current life perpetuated misery, fear, and foreboding. He named the brokenness and judged the current age as corrupt and said it would pass away into the night.

And Jesus said that when the old life had passed away, a new life would come. He offered salvation to his disciples saying that the Son of Man would come “in a cloud with power and great glory” (v26). The Son of Man will bring a new life that dispels with the distress on earth among the nations. Jesus told the disciples, and us, of how God would intervene in the world, and in our lives, dramatically, surely; unwontedly, perhaps; lovingly, certainly. That is the definition of Apocalypse. The Apocalypse, the in-breaking of God, is God intervening in the world out of love and compassion for us and for all creation.

God intervenes because God desires for us to change our ways, to reign in our wandering hearts. And God intervenes in miraculous ways because our ordinary hearts take note of the extraordinary. God entered the world in Jesus the Christ to intervene in human history to bring love and peace to the world. And Jesus has promised that God, again, will intervene in the world on our behalf.

Hope, vv29-33
As we enter Advent and embark on another year together with the Lord, we trust that God will enter history again, in a time to come, spreading peace and love. In advent, we wait, in hope, not just for the new baby, but also for the new age to come when God’s will shall be done on Earth as it is in Heaven.

Intervention brings change and change brings uncertainty and the unknown. In the face of uncertainty and the unknown, we can be watchful for the familiar signs that will bring us comfort and confidence. Like Jesus and the disciples who recognized Spring by the budding fig tree, who were instructed to watch for the age to come, we welcome in the new liturgical year and the new age to come as we dispel the darkness of winter with the light of the hope candle in the Advent wreath and gather around the table in our common meal. When we light the candle, when we break the bread and share the cup, we proclaim the age to come with hope and confidence.

Action, vv34-36
After Jesus proclaimed God’s intervention in the world in the time to come to redeem the world, and urged the disciples to hope and watch with anticipation, Jesus urged the disciples to action. “Be on guard so that your hearts are not weighed down with…the worries of this life, and that day does not catch you unexpectedly.” As we wait, watching for the age to come, we can sway passively in the winds of the world giving in to despair or live active lives of faith. Anticipation does not require idol waiting, but rather preparation – of ourselves, of the world around us for the one coming.

During the colonial period in American history, and eclipse of the sun caught members of a New England state legislature off guard. As they sat deliberating the afternoon light grew dim as night and, in a few minutes, gave way into the utter darkness of midnight. In the midst of general panic, at what appeared to be the powers of the heavens shaking, a motion was made to adjourn.

But one of the legislators stood up and said, ‘Mr. Speaker, if it is not the end of the world and we adjourn, we shall appear to be fools. If it is the end of the world, I choose to be found doing my duty. I move you, sir, let candles be brought.’

Bring on the Advent candles, the bread, and the cup and let’s live in love and act in hope until our Lord comes again.[1]
[1] Adams, Joanna M. “Light the Candles,” The Christian Century. 28 November 2006, p18.