12-30-18 Readings & Sermon

Psalm 147.

Read with me by the half verse.

Worship the Lord, O Jerusalem.

Praise your God, O Zion, for God has strengthened the bars of your gates and blessed your children within you.

God has established peace on your borders and satisfied you with the finest tweet.

God commands is sent out to the earth, and the word of the Lord runs very swiftly.

God gives snow like wool and scatters hoarfrost like ashes.

God scatters hail like breadcrumbs.

Who can stand against the cold of the Lord?

God's word is sent forth and melts them.

God's storm winds blow and waters flow.

God's word is declared to Jacob, God's statutes and judgments to Israel.

The Lord has none not done so to any other nation.

To them God's judgments have not been revealed.

Hallelujah.

Isaiah 61.

I will greatly rejoice in the Lord, my whole being shall exult in my God, for he has clothed me in the garments of salvation, he has covered me with the robes of righteousness.

As a bridegroom decks himself with a garland, and the bride adorns herself with the jewels.

For as the earth brings forth its shoots, and as a garden causes what is sown in it to spring up, so the Lord God will cause righteousness and praise to spring up before all the nations.

For Zion's sake, I will not keep silent, and for Jerusalem's sake, I will not rest until her vindication shines out like the dawn, and her salvation like a burning torch.

The nations shall see your vindication, and all the kings your glory, and you shall be called by a new name that the mouth of the Lord will give.

You shall be a crown of beauty in the hand of the Lord and a royal diadem in the hand of your God.

The word of the Lord.

Let us say together the song of Mary.

For he hath regarded the lowliness of his handmaiden.

For behold, from henceforth all generations shall call me blessed, for he that is mighty hath magnified me.

And his mercy is on them that fear him throughout all generations.

He hath showed strength with his arm.

He hath scattered the proud in the imagination of their hearts.

He hath put down the mighty from their seat, and hath exalted the humble and the meek.

He hath filled the hungry with good things, and the rich he hath sent empty away.

He, remembering his mercy, hath hope in servant Israel, as he promised to our forefathers, Abraham, and his seed forever.

Glory to the Father and to the Son and to the Holy Spirit.

As it was in the beginning, it is now and ever will be.

Amen.

A reading from Galatians.

Now before faith came, we were imprisoned and guarded under the law until faith would be revealed.

Therefore, the law was our disciplinarian until Christ came, so that we might be justified by faith.

But now that faith has come, we are no longer subject to a disciplinarian.

But when the fullness of time had come, God sent his son, born of a woman, born under the law, in order to redeem those who were under the law, so that we might receive adoption as children.

And because you are children, God has sent the Spirit of His Son into our hearts, crying, Abba, Father, so you are no longer a slave, but a child.

And if a child, then also an heir through God.

The word of the Lord.

Let us say together the Gloria on page three of your bulletin.

Glory be to God on high and on earth.

Peace, good will towards man.

We praise thee, we bless thee, we worship thee, we glorify thee, we give thanks to thee for thy great glory.

O Lord God, Heavenly King, God the Father Almighty.

O Lord, the only begotten Son, Jesus Christ.

O Lord God, Lamb of God, Son of the Father, that takest away the sins of the world, have mercy upon us.

Thou that takest away the sins of the world, receive our prayer.

Thou that sittest at the right hand of God the Father, have mercy upon us.

For thou only art holy, thou only art the Lord.

Thou only, O Christ, with the Holy Ghost, art most high, in the glory of God the Father.

Amen.

Of reading from the Gospel according to John.

In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.

He was in the beginning with God.

All things came into being through him, and without him not one thing came into being.

What has come into being in him was life, and the life was light of all people.

The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness did not overcome it.

There was a man sent from God, whose name was John.

He came as a witness to testify to the light, so that all might believe through him.

He himself was not the light, but he came to testify to the light.

The true light, which enlightens everyone, was coming into the world.

He was in the world, and the world came into being through him, yet the world did not know him.

He came to what was his own, and his own people did not accept him.

But to all who received him, who believed in his name, he gave power to become children of God, who were born not of blood, or of the will of the flesh, or of the will of man, but of God.

And the word became flesh and lived among us, and we have seen his glory, the glory as of a Father's only Son, full of grace and truth.

John testified to him and cried out, This was he of whom I said, He who comes after me ranks ahead of me, because he was before me.

From his fullness we have all received grace upon grace.

The law indeed was given through Moses.

Grace and truth came through Jesus Christ.

No one has ever seen God.

It is God, the only Son, who is close to the Father's heart, who has made who has made him known.

The word of the Lord.

Merry Christmas to y'all.

Us lucky Episcopalians get to celebrate Christmas for another six days.

So I hope none of you have taken your Christmas trees down yet, even if it means those pine needles are falling on the floor.

As someone from Pennsylvania, I can't quite understand shipping your trees in all the way from Oregon.

It just seems like it's gonna be a little bit of a mess.

But more power to you because the real trees are great.

Anyway, we're here today to once again celebrate the incarnation of our Lord.

There are many ways to speak of the incarnation.

Words like Emmanuel, Word became flesh, God with us, or as I like, God pitching a tent and dwelling among us.

And there are many aspects to the incarnation.

I believe we could spend our whole lives trying to understand the complexities of what the incarnation means and still not even begin to scratch the surface of this wonder.

One of the beauties of our tradition is that we allow ourselves to embrace mystery.

Not mystery like a good crime novel where everything is explained by the end of the book, but a mystery meaning that God and God's doings are so beautifully complex that we can never fully understand them with our finite human minds.

Yet slowly God reveals bits of God's self to us, and we rejoice and stand in awe of what we begin to see a little more clearly.

Today, using the introduction of John's gospel as my launching point, I attempt to offer up a brief meditation on that mystery of the incarnation of Christ.

First, Jesus dwells among us.

Just as a compassionate friend will sit beside you and not try to change how you feel, but simply be with you in the midst of joy and in the midst of those hard times.

God took on flesh so that God could sit beside us and be with us.

By becoming human, God was able to fully be acquainted with all our human experiences.

God's not some far-off, distant, aloof being, but God through Jesus has experienced hunger, thirst, fear, anger, adrenaline, love, joy, excitement, and the list could go on and on.

Unlike the vicarious feelings I get when I watch a Hallmark movie or TV show.

Currently, my TV show binging choice is this is us.

I'm about halfway through the first season.

And I cry like a baby when I watch it.

But they're vicarious feelings, they're not my own.

But Jesus, when he took on flesh, got to experience feelings for himself, not vicariously through watching a show or watching us from a distance.

Jesus felt the love of a mother and the love of a father.

Jesus experienced the joys of friendship and the pain of rejection.

Jesus went through it all.

There was a season in my early 20s where I felt lost.

I was in despair.

I wasn't sure what I was doing with my life, and I felt alone.

Some probably would classify that as a quarter life crisis.

That's where I was.

It was rough.

It was Holy Week, and I was visiting a contemporary version of the stations of the cross at a Baptist church.

The image of Jesus hung on the cross stood out to me that evening.

It was a dark red silhouette of the cross and of Christ's body with a dark black background.

And then on top of that image, spread across the entire length and width of the canvas were white letters.

The letters spelled out the artist's personal interpretation of what he thought Jesus might have been feeling and thinking when he was on that cross dying.

There were words of disappointment, despair, loneliness, and hopelessness.

Some of what I felt that day.

And it was in that moment while I stared at those words that I realized I was not alone.

But God, by experiencing life and death, not only joined me in my pain, but he took on my pain at that point of the crucifixion.

Incarnation means never having to be alone.

The incarnation is also light shining in the darkness.

The world we live in often feels dark.

Darkness from the brokenness in our own lives, in society, and in the institutions around us.

God came to earth not only to be present to us in the midst of that brokenness and darkness, but also to shine a light into those dark spaces.

Have you ever gone into a cave?

Maybe you were spelunking or on one of those tours.

I did once, and I had a pretty cool experience.

We got back far into the cave, and the guides instructed us all to turn off every light.

It was the first time I ever truly experienced complete darkness.

To say that it was dark would honestly be a bit of an understatement.

I couldn't see shadows or silhouettes.

I could see nothing, not even my own hand in front of my face.

But what was most amazing wasn't that complete darkness, but what was happened at the end of it.

One person at the far other end of this cavernous room turned on one small little light.

And the cavern the cavern changed.

It was transformed.

Things were beginning to be revealed again.

Shapes took form, the unknown became known and recognized.

The place was changed.

In the case of Jesus, this light in the darkness isn't simply to brighten up a place, nor to make the unknown known, but also to reveal God's righteousness.

The Isaiah passage from today uses similar language of illumination to speak of God's righteousness.

And as a bit of a side note, while the translation we read uses the word vindication, it is actually the same root word as what is in the verses preceding translated righteousness.

And other English translations choose to use the word righteousness instead of vindication.

For really, vindication really is only one aspect of the larger understanding of what righteousness is all about.

So hear it again.

Her righteousness shines out like the dawn, and the nations shall see your righteousness.

Shining light into the world means in part illuminating illuminating the world around us, making the brokenness known, and allowing God's righteousness to change and restore, to transform things to the way they are meant to be.

The incarnation means spreading the light of God throughout the world.

Thirdly, the incarnation is the bridge.

This is important, I think, in a world where we can so easily be distracted and our vision taken off of God.

Many in the Jewish community of Jesus' day were themselves distracted.

Either they were focused on the laws and lost sight of God, or they were focused on the idea of political revolution and lost sight of God.

Or they were focused inwardly and not on their neighbors and lost sight on God.

But God took on flesh to stand right in front of them and say, Here I am, look at me.

Do not be distracted.

And they were redirected.

God, by becoming incarnate, bridged the gap between heaven and earth, between the kingdom of man and the kingdom of God.

Through God's presence in His physical in this physical way, through His being able to have true, deep companionship with us, through acts of mercy and healing, God was present on earth as in heaven in new and special ways.

Through Christ, there is a bridge connecting us, the world as it is, with the world as God intends it to be, bringing shalom in a tangible way to earth.

The two worlds, the two realms, merge into in a distinct way, and their point of connection is that point of the incarnation.

And that point of the incarnation will never be separated again.

The incarnation means bridging heaven and earth.

And none of this ends with Christ's incarnate body being resurrected and ascending to heaven.

For that was just the beginning, as we are called to be the body of Christ, meaning in part, we are called to be the Christ who dwells with others, and who shines the light into the darkness, and who bridges the gap between heaven and earth.

And we do this not by our own strength, but by God's.

And we do this not alone, but as a community.

For we are one body.

And it really isn't us doing much of anything, but allowing Christ to be in us and to break through us into the world.

Father Damien, a canonized saint of the Roman Catholic Church, lived into the beauty of the truth of the incarnation.

For 16 years in the late 1800s, Father Damien volunteered to live and serve in a leper colony in Hawaii.

At the time, there were over 800 lepers of all ages living in this quarantined community.

And not only did Father Damien serve the community's spiritual needs, but he also cared for their physical, their emotional, and their communal needs, bringing significant changes to the community.

It was changed and transformed from a place where people came to die to a place where people were allowed to live.

Father Damien spoke his vision when he first arrived, saying to the community, I will be one who will who will be a father to you and who loves you so much that he does not hesitate to become one of you, to live and die with you.

Father Damien did, in fact, live with this community.

He ate food from the hands of the lepers, shared pipes with them, and was said to have lived with the lepers as equals.

Father Damien also died with the community as he eventually contracted the disease and died and was buried in that community.

Father Damien dwelt among the community of outcasts.

He shined a light of hope and righteousness.

He bridged a gap between the brokenness of the world as it was, and the love that comes from the kingdom of God.

We're not all called to live amongst the outcasts of our society, but we are all called to look around and see those who need companionship, who are in need of someone to come alongside and dwell with them.

We are called to shine the righteous light of Christ into the dark places around us to transform those spaces.

We are called to bridge the span between the brokenness of this world as it is with the world as God desires it to be.

I pray that God continues to reveal to each of us the great mystery of the incarnation, to guide us, and to give us vision and courage to be that body of Christ today.