There is nothing quite like the joy and the anticipation of an expectant mother. Mom's to be, sporting their little “baby bump” get stopped in public all the time to be asked questions like “when are you due?” “How are you feeling?” “is it a boy or a girl?” and many other such questions. People love babies. People love it when a young woman is getting ready to be introduced to the joys of motherhood and are eager to share in that joy with her.
We all love children. We love babies. And it's not just because they're cute. Sure their little hands and feet and pudgy little faces are indeed cute, but there's more to it than that. We love them for who they are and we are excited for who they will be. After all, each and every new parent dreams about how their child is going to make a splash and change the world with her athletic prowess or intelligence or grace. When it comes to our children, we all have hopes and dreams about who we want them to grow up to be.
But this joy and this hope and this expectation, it's all about possibility. It is all about who the child will become. Yes, we love our children regardless of their ability, but we hope for earth-shattering achievement from our children. We invest ourselves in them for who we want them to be. We want them to grow, to learn, to mature, and one day to be self sustaining and self functioning adults. Implicit in our hope is an understanding that the child who is born is not the finished product, but is the first step in becoming a finished product.
This being the case (that part of our excitement for our kids is all about who they are going to be) we have to notice just how different this is with Jesus. Yes, Mary was pregnant and she shared in that hope and joy and expectation for the life of her son who she carried in her womb. But there was also a recognition that this boy was not just about possibility, not just about future accomplishments, not just about who he would grow up to be; the growing and developing Child in Mary's womb was her God who made her and who loved her and who was going to save her and the whole world from sin.
Try wrapping your head around that. These days child psychologists have mapped out the brain function of infants even during pregnancy. They can tell you what the child is capable of knowing and understanding even while the child is still in the womb – and it's pretty minimal. They can recognize voices, and sounds but as far as knowing who that voice belongs to and why that voice is important? Not so much. And even when they are born, infants are completely dependent on their parents, on their mothers. They need their mothers for food, they make a mess of themselves and need their clothes to be changed, they can't talk, can't reason, they can barely even see.
But all of that being the case, when Mary with the Christ Child still in her womb went to visit her relative Elizabeth, to help and assist her aged kin during her pregnancy, Elizabeth acknowledged in faith that the baby developing in Mary's womb was her Lord. She said, “Who am I that the mother of my Lord should come to me?” The infant, the little developing child was worth excitement and hope and expectation, but not just because of who he would one day become. This baby was even then her Lord. He was God in the flesh, come to earth to save them from sin.
In our text this morning we have two expectant mothers, gathering together and sharing in the joys of their pregnancies. Both moms and moms-to-be love to share that joy with each other. They love to swap stories and be a part of each others' excitement. Moms (and dads) love their babies, their children. But I wonder if we don't, at times, love our children a little too much. I wonder if we don't at times love them with a love that we aught to reserve only for God.
Consider as an example the retail chain Baby's R Us. Expecting moms and dads go in to that store to register for all kinds of baby paraphernalia, much of which is expensive, more than they can afford, really, because they want their child to have what is the best.
If my child is going to have every opportunity, if my child is one day going to have to choose between the full-ride football scholarship to Ohio State or the full ride academic scholarship to Harvard, it's going to start right here with this state of the art diaper disposal system. And so parents pay the money.
Parents spend insane amounts of money on un-necessary baby products because they are convinced that they added expense is all a part of giving their child the best of every opportunity. Whether or not we have a diaper genie, how many of us have overlooked our child's obvious sins because we think of them as “little angels”. We love our children and that is good, but our love for our children often becomes a love that we aught to reserve only for God. This is sin that demands repentance.
But consider these two women discussing their pregnancies together just outside Elizabeth's home on that day. Elizabeth was old, beyond child bearing years. And even when she could have had children her body was incapable of producing a child. She was barren, unable to conceive. The child in her womb was improbable to say the least. More like unthinkable, unimaginable, or impossible! Yet here she was in her old age pregnant and preparing to deliver. Do you think Elizabeth might have been tempted to love her child too much, to hold on to him too tightly after having waited so long?
And then there was Mary. If Elizabeth's pregnancy was unlikely, Mary's was entirely impossible. Women don't just all of a sudden become pregnant. There is biology involved. There is a process that needs to occur. There needs to be a father, a seed, a man to provide the other half of the necessary ingredients. There was none. Mary was a virgin.
And so we had in these two women, life out of death in one, and life out of nothing in the other. Both were miraculous. Both were evidence of the hand of God. God had come in to his creation to do things that don't normally occur because all of this was a part of his great plan for our salvation.
As greatly as these two women would have been tempted to sins of pride and idolatry with their respective pregnancies, here in our text we don't see it. That is not to say that they didn't feel it, that they were innocent of these sins. It is to say that Luke would rather have us focus not on the mothers but on the sons; and among the two baby boys still in their mothers' womb, Luke would have us see and understand that the foremost Child is the Christ child, the baby in the womb of the virgin.
Old Testament Jews would have shown reverence when the Ark of Covenant passed by them. Not because there was anything of great importance in the Ark, itself. It was, after all, only a box. But the box was God's box. It was God's throne and where the Ark was, there God was. Just as the Ark of the Covenant was the vessel that carried the Lord, so also Mary was the vessel that carried the Lord. “Behold,” Mary had said, “I am the handmaid of the Lord, let it be to me as you have said.” And the Word of the Lord created in Mary exactly what it said, a child was conceived in her, a baby who was Christ the Lord. He had come down from heaven and made his home with Mary.
And so when Mary, the God bearer, came in to the home of Elizabeth, she understood this properly to be the entrance of the Lord, very literally, into her life. God was with her. And so she worshiped.
Our text says that she exclaimed. True enough, but not quite the whole story. An exclamation is little more than excitement. There are lots of reasons why we might be moved to exclaim. Our school children let out an exclamation after they finished their last day before Christmas break on Friday. They teachers also let out an exclamation of their own. Christmas morning might inspire an exclamation or two at your house – hopefully one from you.
Elizabeth, when she made her exclamation was not merely expressing joy or even excitement. Elizabeth was engaged in worship. The text says that Elizabeth anefwnhsen This is a worship term. A term that the Old Testament uses in connection with the liturgical ceremonies having to do with the Ark of the Covenant. Mary was the bearer of God, as God drew near, Elizabeth, being filled with the Holy Spirit began to worship.
And she was not alone. The child in her womb, the miraculously conceived prophet to be, the infant John leaped in his mother's womb; an indication of the relationship that the two of them would share as they came into adulthood. John would preach and make ready the way for Jesus to come.
But Elizabeth and John were not the only ones to worship Jesus. On the night of his birth, all of heaven would be filled with the singing of angel choirs who were celebrating and worshiping this child. They would share their song with shepherds who would run into the town of Bethlehem to see if what they said was true. The shepherds would join their voices with the angels in songs of praise to God. (We have all had songs and melodies stick in our heads so that we hum them without even realizing it – imagine if the melody stuck in your head was first heard on the tongue of an angel...)
But there were others...
At the temple, when Mary and Joseph brought their 8 day old son for circumcision they would be met by Simeon and Anna, both of whom would worship the boy. A few years past and the magi would come with kingly gifts to lay before him as they would bow down to worship him as their God and king.
But even they were not alone. Fishermen would call him Lord and God, those who doubted him would confess him as King. The blind, the lame, the sick, the sinners, the broken and despised, the lepers, the outcasts, the unclean, the demon possessed, all would fall down before him and worship him as their God and king. All would believe him to be who he said he was – the Messiah, the Son of God who came to seek and to save what was lost.
And this God, the baby carried in the womb of a virgin, born in a barn and laid in a manger, worshiped by angels and shepherds and sinners would be your Lord. He would save you from your sin so that you might also rejoice and exclaim and worship. He has come, to die, for you. He has paid for your sins, all of them, so that you might no longer call sin or Satan your lord. Jesus is God, the baby in the womb, in the manger, the man on the cross, is your Lord. Worship Him.
Sunday, December 20, 2009
Monday, December 7, 2009
Advent 2 - Philippian 1:2-11
He was a soldier in the Roman army, serving his tour of duty in the city of Philippi. He had been assigned to guard the prisoners in the jail and did his duty the way any other soldier would. He knew what was expected of him and he knew the penalty if he didn't obey. So he did what he had to do.
One night he was assigned to watch the prisoners during the evening hours. There had been a disturbance in town during the day, some rabble-rousers had caused problems for a fortune teller, a slave girl, so that she couldn't tell fortunes any more and the crowd turned against them. The two trouble makers were arrested, they got their due – a good beating to cool their heads. And were thrown into prison. The soldier was given orders to keep an eye on them so he put them in the stocks in the high security area.
Usually a good beating and a night in shackles is enough to break anybody down. But these prisoners were different. Their spirits weren't broken. Far from it. They didn't argue between themselves. They didn't pass blame to each other. In fact they seemed to be perfectly okay with their plight. They even started to sing. Not the drinking songs that he was used to hearing, that most of his prisoners were familiar with. They sang hymns and psalms. He was unnerved by it. It got to him.
And then it happened. By chance there was an earthquake that shook the prison to its very foundations. Enough so that the prison doors all fell off and the prisoners were set free. In the quake something must have landed on the guard's head so that he blacked out. When he came-to he saw the doors hanging off their hinges and he knew what had happened. Surely by now the prisoners were all long gone and he was going to be answerable. He knew the penalty. Any prisoner gets away and he had to pay for it with his life. Easier and probably less painful to do the job himself so he got out his sword and prepared to take his life. But just then a voice from the inner cell called out to him to stop. It was one of the singers. “Stop.” He said, “Don't hurt yourself. We are all here.”
The jailer had all he could take. He ran in to the prison, fell at the feet of his prisoner and begged him and his friend to tell him what he must do to be saved.
The prisoners were Paul and Silas. The story was no story. It's history recorded by St Luke in the book of Acts. You can read it yourself in chapter 16. Paul and Silas traveled to the city of Philippi where they preached the Gospel of Jesus Christ in the city. They were arrested and imprisoned and the result of their imprisonment was the conversion of this jailer.
I imagine when Paul wrote the words of our text, the letter to church in the city of Philippi, when he mentioned how he remembered them fondly in his prayers, the name of this Roman soldier must have come to his mind. I imagine, when these words were read for the first time at the church in Philippi, the soldier and his entire family must have thought back to that night when they took this prisoner into their home to bandage his wounds; how taught them about a man named Jesus who was God and who died to save them from their sins, and how he baptized them as believers in Jesus for their Salvation.
In our text, Paul mentions a “good work” that God began. That night was the beginning of the “good work” that Paul mentions here in our Epistle reading for today, the good work that was begun by the Holy Spirit in the heart and life of this soldier through the preaching of God's word and through his conversion to faith in Jesus. And Paul says that he who began that good work would be faithful, that he would see that good work through to the end, through to the end of his life and to the very last day when Jesus would return in Glory to judge the living and the dead.
And it was a good thing too, because it wasn't easy to be a soldier in the roman army. Roman soldiers were pagans. They worshiped pagan gods. They believed in luck and fortune telling. They wanted to stay alive and so they looked for help from any spirit or god they thought could give them help. They were a rough and tumble bunch. Not given to kindness and gentleness. You don't survive as a soldier by apologizing to people. They were immoral, given to prostitution and gambling and all kinds of vices. This man had his work cut out for him. But he was cut to heart by the preaching of the missionary and so he repented of his sin and he hoped to do better.
In that sense, in all those ways that we mentioned, the life of this Roman soldier isn't too different from our own, is it? It has been said that we live in a post Christian era. People used to believe in God, they used to know and respect Jesus. They used to know and respect what it means to be a follower of Jesus. These days, people don't care. They care to be spiritual, mind you, but Buddhism, mysticism, neo-paganism, is all just as good as any other kind of religion. We live in a immoral society. Janet Jackson, Britney Spears, Madonna, and now Adam Lambert have all flaunted their sexuality and dared us to condemn them. People these days are dishonest, likely to steal if given the opportunity, likely to cheat if they know they can get away with it. Likely to lash out at you if you would dare to tell them they are wrong. The more the world changes the more it stays the same. Wouldn't you agree?
So Paul gives those comforting words to the soldier and his family struggling to remain pure and blameless and excellent and praiseworthy in a world that is immoral and impure and filthy. “He who began the good work will also see it to completion.” He who called you to faith, who brought you to faith who raised you from the death of unbelief and gave you the new life of faith will keep you alive, resuscitate you if he has to, give you spiritual mouth to mouth to keep you living and breathing as a child of God until the day of Jesus.
That was good news for the Philippians. That is good news for us. God does not leave us to ourselves. He who called us to faith has promised to keep us in that faith through to the very end.
This past week we have all witnessed the melt down of Tiger Woods as evidence has come out to suggest infidelity in his marriage. One who seemed so straight and controlled seems to have a dark side. In truth, we should not be surprised. Tiger Woods is a sinner, the way any one of us is a sinner. Tiger is enormously successful. An abundance of the world's goods attracts an abundance of the world's temptations. Any one of us in the same situation might very well do the same thing.
Consider King David, a man after God's own heart, who had a similar indiscretion with Bathsheba – even going so far as to murder her husband to cover his sin. If there had been super market tabloids in his day, imagine what the headlines would have been. Imagine the news reporters who would have camped outside his home to catch a glimpse or uncover a little bit more dirt. The more the world changes, the more it stays the same.
The truth is, Roman Soldiers, Kings and Giant killers, professional golfers, and every day people like you and me all need Christ's forgiveness. We all do stupid things that we know we shouldn't do. We all are a hair's breadth away from our own scandal. We all need the forgiveness and healing and restoration that is ours only through the power of the One who is faithful, who does not abandon us, but sees us through, faithfully keeping to that good work that he began in us so long ago, promising to bring it to it's completion at the very end.
David had his scandal. God did not leave him to flounder in his sin. Instead God mercifully sent the prophet Nathan to him to convict him of his wrong, to uncover his wickedness (which is sure to have been painful) and then to restore him. The Spirit that David had denied, had refused to give up so easily. He stayed with David. He pierced his heart with his own guilt and crushed his spirit with his own shame. But, David wrote, “Let me hear joy and gladness. Let the bones that you have broken rejoice. Hide your face from my sins and blot out my iniquities. Create in me a clean heart oh God and renew a right spirit within me.”
In our text Paul mentions that he pray for the Philippians. He gives the content of that prayer. “That your love may abound more and more, with knowledge and all discernment so that you may approve what is excellent and so be pure and blameless for the day of Christ, filled with the fruit of righteousness that comes through Christ Jesus to the glory and praise of God.”
There's a lot there. There is much that is of significance and importance. Allow me break it down for you.
It is Paul's desire that the lives of the Philippian Christians be changed. Whether you were a soldier in the Roman army, a merchant, a common laborer or a slave, life was filled with temptations. Paul did not want them to give way to those temptations – he wanted them to be pure and blameless. But that doesn't just happen – not when sinful people live in a sinful world. That only happens with Jesus. That only happens when the one who began the good work sees it through to the end. The only way to make it happen, the only way to be filled with love, to be pure and blameless, to possess that knowledge and discernment, the only way to be filled with the fruit of righteousness that comes through Jesus Christ, is to be where Jesus Christ is. Where he has promised to be for you.
David said, “Cleanse me with hyssop and I will be clean.” he was referring to the rites of temple sacrifice. The priests would sprinkle the worshipers with blood from the sacrifice with a branch from a hyssop tree. David, when he was caught in his sin, when he was guilty and shamed and broken, went to church. God restored his heart and made him new.
In the same way, Christians go where God has commanded them to go, Christians go where God has promised He will be: in church. In the means of grace. In the preaching and the reading of the Word. In the absolution. In baptism. In the Lord's Supper. Release from bondage to sin, restoration to life as God's child comes through God's forgiveness given out where he promises to give it. We come here. We confess our sins. God takes them from us and we are made whole.
This world is a minefield of temptation. Any soldier in God's army has their work cut out for them if they hope to make it through without stepping in something that will blow up in their face. So we do our best to navigate our way through the temptations, searching the Word of God for wisdom and discernment to keep us safe along the way. But we are careless. We are foolish. We fall to temptations that hurt us and would destroy us. But God heals. God restores. Through the blood of Jesus shed for us on the cross we are once again made whole. May we be, all the days of our lives, where Jesus is for us.
Amen.
One night he was assigned to watch the prisoners during the evening hours. There had been a disturbance in town during the day, some rabble-rousers had caused problems for a fortune teller, a slave girl, so that she couldn't tell fortunes any more and the crowd turned against them. The two trouble makers were arrested, they got their due – a good beating to cool their heads. And were thrown into prison. The soldier was given orders to keep an eye on them so he put them in the stocks in the high security area.
Usually a good beating and a night in shackles is enough to break anybody down. But these prisoners were different. Their spirits weren't broken. Far from it. They didn't argue between themselves. They didn't pass blame to each other. In fact they seemed to be perfectly okay with their plight. They even started to sing. Not the drinking songs that he was used to hearing, that most of his prisoners were familiar with. They sang hymns and psalms. He was unnerved by it. It got to him.
And then it happened. By chance there was an earthquake that shook the prison to its very foundations. Enough so that the prison doors all fell off and the prisoners were set free. In the quake something must have landed on the guard's head so that he blacked out. When he came-to he saw the doors hanging off their hinges and he knew what had happened. Surely by now the prisoners were all long gone and he was going to be answerable. He knew the penalty. Any prisoner gets away and he had to pay for it with his life. Easier and probably less painful to do the job himself so he got out his sword and prepared to take his life. But just then a voice from the inner cell called out to him to stop. It was one of the singers. “Stop.” He said, “Don't hurt yourself. We are all here.”
The jailer had all he could take. He ran in to the prison, fell at the feet of his prisoner and begged him and his friend to tell him what he must do to be saved.
The prisoners were Paul and Silas. The story was no story. It's history recorded by St Luke in the book of Acts. You can read it yourself in chapter 16. Paul and Silas traveled to the city of Philippi where they preached the Gospel of Jesus Christ in the city. They were arrested and imprisoned and the result of their imprisonment was the conversion of this jailer.
I imagine when Paul wrote the words of our text, the letter to church in the city of Philippi, when he mentioned how he remembered them fondly in his prayers, the name of this Roman soldier must have come to his mind. I imagine, when these words were read for the first time at the church in Philippi, the soldier and his entire family must have thought back to that night when they took this prisoner into their home to bandage his wounds; how taught them about a man named Jesus who was God and who died to save them from their sins, and how he baptized them as believers in Jesus for their Salvation.
In our text, Paul mentions a “good work” that God began. That night was the beginning of the “good work” that Paul mentions here in our Epistle reading for today, the good work that was begun by the Holy Spirit in the heart and life of this soldier through the preaching of God's word and through his conversion to faith in Jesus. And Paul says that he who began that good work would be faithful, that he would see that good work through to the end, through to the end of his life and to the very last day when Jesus would return in Glory to judge the living and the dead.
And it was a good thing too, because it wasn't easy to be a soldier in the roman army. Roman soldiers were pagans. They worshiped pagan gods. They believed in luck and fortune telling. They wanted to stay alive and so they looked for help from any spirit or god they thought could give them help. They were a rough and tumble bunch. Not given to kindness and gentleness. You don't survive as a soldier by apologizing to people. They were immoral, given to prostitution and gambling and all kinds of vices. This man had his work cut out for him. But he was cut to heart by the preaching of the missionary and so he repented of his sin and he hoped to do better.
In that sense, in all those ways that we mentioned, the life of this Roman soldier isn't too different from our own, is it? It has been said that we live in a post Christian era. People used to believe in God, they used to know and respect Jesus. They used to know and respect what it means to be a follower of Jesus. These days, people don't care. They care to be spiritual, mind you, but Buddhism, mysticism, neo-paganism, is all just as good as any other kind of religion. We live in a immoral society. Janet Jackson, Britney Spears, Madonna, and now Adam Lambert have all flaunted their sexuality and dared us to condemn them. People these days are dishonest, likely to steal if given the opportunity, likely to cheat if they know they can get away with it. Likely to lash out at you if you would dare to tell them they are wrong. The more the world changes the more it stays the same. Wouldn't you agree?
So Paul gives those comforting words to the soldier and his family struggling to remain pure and blameless and excellent and praiseworthy in a world that is immoral and impure and filthy. “He who began the good work will also see it to completion.” He who called you to faith, who brought you to faith who raised you from the death of unbelief and gave you the new life of faith will keep you alive, resuscitate you if he has to, give you spiritual mouth to mouth to keep you living and breathing as a child of God until the day of Jesus.
That was good news for the Philippians. That is good news for us. God does not leave us to ourselves. He who called us to faith has promised to keep us in that faith through to the very end.
This past week we have all witnessed the melt down of Tiger Woods as evidence has come out to suggest infidelity in his marriage. One who seemed so straight and controlled seems to have a dark side. In truth, we should not be surprised. Tiger Woods is a sinner, the way any one of us is a sinner. Tiger is enormously successful. An abundance of the world's goods attracts an abundance of the world's temptations. Any one of us in the same situation might very well do the same thing.
Consider King David, a man after God's own heart, who had a similar indiscretion with Bathsheba – even going so far as to murder her husband to cover his sin. If there had been super market tabloids in his day, imagine what the headlines would have been. Imagine the news reporters who would have camped outside his home to catch a glimpse or uncover a little bit more dirt. The more the world changes, the more it stays the same.
The truth is, Roman Soldiers, Kings and Giant killers, professional golfers, and every day people like you and me all need Christ's forgiveness. We all do stupid things that we know we shouldn't do. We all are a hair's breadth away from our own scandal. We all need the forgiveness and healing and restoration that is ours only through the power of the One who is faithful, who does not abandon us, but sees us through, faithfully keeping to that good work that he began in us so long ago, promising to bring it to it's completion at the very end.
David had his scandal. God did not leave him to flounder in his sin. Instead God mercifully sent the prophet Nathan to him to convict him of his wrong, to uncover his wickedness (which is sure to have been painful) and then to restore him. The Spirit that David had denied, had refused to give up so easily. He stayed with David. He pierced his heart with his own guilt and crushed his spirit with his own shame. But, David wrote, “Let me hear joy and gladness. Let the bones that you have broken rejoice. Hide your face from my sins and blot out my iniquities. Create in me a clean heart oh God and renew a right spirit within me.”
In our text Paul mentions that he pray for the Philippians. He gives the content of that prayer. “That your love may abound more and more, with knowledge and all discernment so that you may approve what is excellent and so be pure and blameless for the day of Christ, filled with the fruit of righteousness that comes through Christ Jesus to the glory and praise of God.”
There's a lot there. There is much that is of significance and importance. Allow me break it down for you.
It is Paul's desire that the lives of the Philippian Christians be changed. Whether you were a soldier in the Roman army, a merchant, a common laborer or a slave, life was filled with temptations. Paul did not want them to give way to those temptations – he wanted them to be pure and blameless. But that doesn't just happen – not when sinful people live in a sinful world. That only happens with Jesus. That only happens when the one who began the good work sees it through to the end. The only way to make it happen, the only way to be filled with love, to be pure and blameless, to possess that knowledge and discernment, the only way to be filled with the fruit of righteousness that comes through Jesus Christ, is to be where Jesus Christ is. Where he has promised to be for you.
David said, “Cleanse me with hyssop and I will be clean.” he was referring to the rites of temple sacrifice. The priests would sprinkle the worshipers with blood from the sacrifice with a branch from a hyssop tree. David, when he was caught in his sin, when he was guilty and shamed and broken, went to church. God restored his heart and made him new.
In the same way, Christians go where God has commanded them to go, Christians go where God has promised He will be: in church. In the means of grace. In the preaching and the reading of the Word. In the absolution. In baptism. In the Lord's Supper. Release from bondage to sin, restoration to life as God's child comes through God's forgiveness given out where he promises to give it. We come here. We confess our sins. God takes them from us and we are made whole.
This world is a minefield of temptation. Any soldier in God's army has their work cut out for them if they hope to make it through without stepping in something that will blow up in their face. So we do our best to navigate our way through the temptations, searching the Word of God for wisdom and discernment to keep us safe along the way. But we are careless. We are foolish. We fall to temptations that hurt us and would destroy us. But God heals. God restores. Through the blood of Jesus shed for us on the cross we are once again made whole. May we be, all the days of our lives, where Jesus is for us.
Amen.
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