Luke 1:39-56 - Mary: Woman of Justice

As the choir sang about this morning, the shepherds witnessed something miraculous and marvelous that Christmas night. Angels appeared before them and glory shone round about them. And the angels sang praise to God and offered peace on earth. Every Christmas people dream of peace on earth. And every Christmas we realize that we have a long way to go to get there.

Peace between nations is far off. Back in the eighties we saw the end of the cold war and we thought this might be a coming peace. But since that time we have not known peace at all. And once again, this year, we have troops on the other side of the world, celebrating Christmas away from their families and their loved ones. I am sure that they are praying for peace on earth this Christmas, just as they are trying to bring peace to Iraq themselves.

Peace between individuals is far away also. We have broken homes and broken relationships all around us. People are hurting and suffering alone and the pretend at peace, but it is really not there.

But the angels talked of peace on earth and I wish it were something that we could find in this world. I look around and it seems forever distant. And yet it was sung of that Christmas night. Jesus was meant to bring peace to this world, even though we don’t see it. To understand the peace that Jesus brings we need to look a little earlier in the Christmas story than the nativity or the shepherds. We need to look back at Mary’s song and the justice that she knew God would bring.

I. Banned

The song of Mary which we read this morning is often known as the Magnificat. This is the first word in the song in Latin. The Magnificat plays an important role in more liturgical churches, particularly the Catholic Church. It gets sung regularly in worship as it is the first real song of praise to God that we find in the New Testament. And it is a song written by Mary. Obviously the Catholics are going to like it. And yet, I was shocked to find out that in the 80s, in Guatemala, a country that at the time was between 75 and 80 percent Catholic, it was illegal to speak the Magnificat in public. That’s right; the government of Guatemala found gentle Mary’s song so subversive, so dangerous, that they banned it.

Now I must admit, I expect this kind of thing in certain governments. Governments that are autocratic, governments that try to reduce freedom will often try to take people’s religion from them. In some Islamic countries in the Middle East and in Africa it is illegal to convert from Islam to Christianity. Communist Russia outlawed Christianity in all forms and Communist China has a husk of Christianity allowed so they can say that they support religious freedom though it is clear through their practices that they don’t. The government of Guatemala was in the midst of revolution in the 80s and has never been a stable government. So maybe it makes sense for them to try to take people’s faith away from them.

But it wasn’t people’s faith that the Guatemalan government was trying to steal from them. They were allowed to remain whatever religion they wanted. They didn’t have their Bibles removed from them, they weren’t told they couldn’t worship, they were just not allowed to recite the Magnificat, the song of Mary in public.

The government of Guatemala found something dangerous in Mary’s song. They found something powerful in the way that the people were responding to it. And they were scared of it.

As we continue our Advent look at Mary, Jesus’ mother, we will look at her song this morning. What do we find revolutionary in it? Does it have the power in it that the government of Guatemala was so scared of? Or is it just a nice song written by a young woman who was praising God for what he was going to do?

II. Mary’s World

Mary’s song and the danger seen in it by the wicked and the rulers becomes clear, once again, when we look at it in the context of Mary’s world. Mary and her people lived lives of subjugation. They were ruled over by people whom they didn’t want ruling over them. Rome controlled the world. It is because of Roman rule that Mary ended up not being able to give birth at home, but rather in Bethlehem, because of a census. Because of the rule of the Romans, Mary and all of her people felt helpless and week. They could not live the way they wanted. Their worship had to conform to the expectations of their Roman masters. And Rome had placed King Herod in charge of the area that Mary lived in. King Herod was not a kind ruler. When Mary sings that the Lord “has brought down rulers from their thrones”, anybody hearing this would know what rulers she was talking about. She was talking about Herod the great. And here was a teen aged, unwed pregnant girl singing a song that proclaimed the end of Herod’s reign. This takes courage. It takes willpower. It takes a great faith in the power of God to bring about his will.

Think forward a little bit in the Christmas story for a moment, if you will. The Magi come from the east, to King Herod the Great, and tell him of a great king that they see coming to Israel. What is Herod’s response? It is to murder children around the country, to protect his throne. This is the kind of ruler that Herod is. He will do anything to retain his power. He even killed his own family to make sure that he would remain king. He was ruthless and hard. And Mary, a young girl, stands up to him, through song, as she acknowledges what it is that she believes God is going to do through her son, Jesus. Scot McKnight puts it so well in his book, The Real Mary:

If you were a first-century poor woman, if you were hungry and oppressed, if you had experienced the injustices of Herod the Great, and if you stood up in Jerusalem and announced that the proud and rulers and the rich would be yanked down from their high places, it is likely you’d be tried for treason and put to death for disturbing the “peace.”

If you were Herod or one of his twelve wives or one of his many sons with hopes of the throne, you would have heard these words as an act of protest, if not revolution or rebellion. Even if you, as Mary, were to argue with your accusers that these are words straight out of the Bible, you’d be accused of subversion, of wanting your son to become the next king. You just might end up crucified. (McKnight, 23)

But Mary’s subversion is not an earthly subversion. Her treasonous words weren’t to round up people to revolt. No, Mary saw God as the worker in these things. She saw God as someone who was on the side of justice. She saw God as the one acting to bring about this reversal in fortunes. She sees God as the one who will give food to the hungry, and she understands this because she herself is hungry. She sees God as the one who will put an end to the current problems in the world, the current injustices, the current pains.

But Mary didn’t understand all the details. We need to realize that, along with most of God’s people, she didn’t get what God was doing initially. Mary didn’t know at the beginning that God was sending his Son to die on a cross. She believed that her son would probably be an earthly king. She believed that God was going to put an end to the reign of Herod and begin the reign of Jesus. She didn’t know how God was going to change the world through her son, she just knew that he was. And she believed that this offered hope to the weak and the downtrodden and the poor. She believed this because God was using a poor young girl to bring about his coming kingdom. She believed this because she truly believed in the justice of God.

III. God of Justice

You see, both sides of the political stream get this wrong. The conservatives believe that it is the individual’s role to give food to themselves. They believe that everybody has the opportunity to make it and those who have failed have only themselves to blame. They’re wrong. It is not the individual who is responsible for taking care of themselves, it is God who reaches down to care for them.

The liberal believes that it is the government’s role to help the hungry. Actually, they’re closer to the truth in this area than the conservative. For, again and again, throughout the Old Testament prophets and even here, God is promising to come in and make right the things that the government has failed at. But, though they may be more on the right path, here, they still have it wrong. For, once again, Mary says it so clearly, it is God who will bring justice to this world. God is the only one capable of it. God is the only one who will not let self-interest get in the way of justice.

Mary was a woman of justice in that she pointed the way to a God of justice. Mary believed that God was going to do great things through her coming son. She had hope that God would bring an end to the suffering of her people. She had faith that God would stay true to his promises. And so she sang a song and prayed a prayer praising God for something that he had not yet done.

But here we are, two thousand years later, and the poor are still poor and there are still hopeless people out there. Was Mary’s song of justice just a fleeting hope, or is it more than that? Well, I believe that the fact that the song was banned in the 80s in Guatemala shows that it is more than just a fleeting hope.

There is power in Mary’s song. It is the power of speaking something into existence. Justice is still needed in places around this world. Sometimes, justice is needed even here in America. And we believe that Jesus can bring it. But how?

Are we willing to wait for Jesus’ second coming? Are we willing to accept that justice will never be on this earth until he comes again? I’m not willing to admit that. Oh, deep down I know that in a way it is true. As long as sin is in this world we will never know justice completely. The powerful will always lord it over the weak. Those who have will always take advantage of those who don’t.

But we do believe that Jesus came to this earth 2000 years ago and his coming made a difference. We believe that he came to save us from our sins and give us eternal life, but he must have come to save us from the earthly results of sin as well. I think he did. And he did in this way. We are told in scripture that we are the body of Christ. As the church, God is using us to work his will in this world. We are God’s hands, feet and voice. God is still a God of justice, but he has a new way to bring it. We, like Mary in her day, are called as the people of God to bring justice to the world around us. It’s an overwhelming job that God’s given us. But he’s given us the resources to do. We are told that he has given us his Holy Spirit to empower us and to move us forward in our faith.

People talk a lot at Christmastime about peace on earth. It’s in a lot of songs and on many banners. It’s something that is worthwhile to focus on each and every Christmas. It was proclaimed by the angels on that first Christmas night. How will we ever find peace on earth? When justice reigns. So, this Christmas, take a cue from Mary and do what you can to bring justice to your world; in song, in word, or in deed. God is ready to work justice through you as he did through Mary.

Luke 1:26-38 "Mary: Woman of Faith"

Well, we ended up canceling church last Sunday because of ice. So my Advent season is going to be very short. Next week we are having our children's Christmas program and then we have one more Sunday in Advent. I will finish up this series on Christmas Morning with our Christmas service. This sermon is somewhat racy as it talks about an unwed mother. Also, I mention it in the text, but I'm using Scot McKnight's The Real Mary quite seriously in this sermon series.

I. Why Mary

This year I plan to spend the Advent season looking at Jesus’ mother, Mary. This can be a dangerous place to go. Catholics through the centuries have built Mary up to such a place, put her on such a pedestal, that she is barely human anymore. They have called her the mother of God, they have prayed to her, they have talked about her faith being perfect in a way that human faith cannot ever be. They have exempted her from original sin, which afflicts every human. But Protestants have protested this goddess worship of Mary and have gotten back to a more scriptural version of a young woman who was chosen by God for great things. But in rejecting the Catholic extra-biblical ideas about Mary, many of us Protestants have rejected Mary altogether. We don’t want to make the same mistakes that the Catholic church made in regard to Mary so we’ll avoid spending much time talking about her.

And yet Mary is the center of the Christmas story. It is her faith that allows Christmas to happen in the first place. We are told throughout the Gospel of Luke that Mary pondered these things in her heart and we realize that Luke is telling us that he talked to Mary when writing the Gospel, giving her a chance to tell of Jesus’ birth as she experienced it. When, in the fullness of time, God was ready to send his Son, it was Mary whom he chose to be Jesus’ mother. Mary was not a goddess, but she was special.

I am reading a book by Scot McKnight, a professor at North Park University, called The Real Mary: Why Evangelical Christians Can Embrace the Mother of Jesus and it truly is an inspiring book. In the book we see that when we don’t place Mary on such a high pedestal, we discover that we can learn from her faith and her life. We can see how she was faithful to God and God was able to use this to bring about great things in the world.

So, this Advent season, let’s set aside our fear of being too Catholic and instead look at Mary and see what she can offer to us as Christians. We can definitely learn from her and grow in faith as we see that she was a woman of strong faith and great faithfulness.

II. A Difficult Situation

I don’t think we truly allow ourselves to understand Mary’s great faith until we allow ourselves to understand the world she lived in. The fact that she went along with what Gabriel told her in today’s scripture is quite amazing. You see, by agreeing to be the mother of Jesus, Mary was agreeing to begin a path down a long and difficult road, one that would make her an outcast, one that would eventually lead to her watching her son die on a cross at the young age of thirty-three. Of course she didn’t know that she would experience her son’s death. She probably believed that her son would be an earthly king, just as so many others believed.

But she did know that she would be ostracized and gossiped about when people found out that she, an unwed and engaged mother, was pregnant. You see, life has changed much in the last 2000 years. We treat unwed mothers much differently than they were treated in Jesus’ day. In fact, in Jesus’ day the laws were set that if a woman was pregnant outside of wedlock, they could be killed for this.

So, when Mary agreed to be Jesus’ mother, she was acting out in faith and facing death to do so. It gets a bit worse, though. You see, in Mary’s day, women would argue that they weren’t responsible for their pregnancy, and when they argued this they would be forced to participate in the bitter waters test. The bitter waters test was not a pleasant one. Mary, if Joseph had asked it, would have been brought before the priest, and be placed under oath and told to drink “bitter waters”: a mixture of dust, holy water, and a written curse that the priest would have written out in ink and put in the water. The written curse would say this, “may the Lord cause you to become a curse among your people when he makes your womb to miscarry and your abdomen swell.” It was believed that if the woman was guilty she would become sick. If she didn’t become sick, it was believed that she was not guilty of adultery.

But this also isn’t the worst of it. You see, in Mary’s day, this was practiced in front of large groups of people and the suspected adulteress would be paraded in front of them in full humiliation. Furthermore, the bitter waters that they would drink would often cause them to become sick and even miscarry.

By agreeing to God’s plan to bring Jesus into the world in such an unusual way, Mary was face this possibility in her life. But Mary trusted God. She trusted that God would not ask something of her and then betray her. And so she responded to Gabriel with words of faith: “may it be to me as you have said.”

III. Great Faith allows God to do Great Things

There are two traps that people tend to fall into when they see this faith of Mary. One is to take it for granted and undervalue it. We do that when we ignore the risks she was willing to take to be faithful to God. We do that when we convince ourselves that anybody in Mary’s situation would have done the same thing. We do that when we allow ourselves to think that Mary’s faith was easy. Having faith, being faithful to God when circumstances are against you, is not meant to be easy. It is meant to be difficult. It is meant to be work, to be hard. Faith is not supposed to be simple. It asks much from us, sometimes our very lives.

The second trap that some fall into is to elevate Mary’s faith up to such a height that we put her in a place that no other mortal could possibly reach. We elevate her to the place of goddess and look at her faith and faithfulness as superhuman. When we do this we miss the truth that we are all called to this great faith that Mary showed when Gabriel appeared to her.

You see, Mary isn’t someone to look up to as the perfect example that we can never reach. Instead, when we see her step out in faith, we realize that we are called to the same kind of life-risking faith. Without faith Mary would not have accepted the words that Gabriel had for her. She would have told God that she was too young or not ready. She would have said no to God’s great plan for her life and Jesus wouldn’t have been born. Think about that for a minute. God relied on the faith of one woman, Mary, and because of her faith he was able to bring us his Son, Jesus.

When we step out in faith, when we respond to God in the way Mary did, saying “may it be,” God is able to bring around great things in our world as well. It’s a strange thing, the way God works. He continually looks for ways to find faithful followers to work through. He continues to call to people and ask them to step out in faith and move forward. And when they do he then uses their faith to change the world, to save it. He did it for Mary. He saved the world through her. And he can do it for us as well.

And so we can look at Mary and see her as a woman of true faith. We can see her resolve in a difficult situation. We can see that she was willing to step out in faith even though it would take her to a very difficult place. And we can find it in ourselves to do the same thing. Maybe we might not have an angel appear to us and tell us we are going to be the parent of the Savior of the world. But we do have God asking us to step out in faith. How are we going to respond? Amen.

An Introduction to my Advent Sermons

Assuming that we don't get snowed out this weekend (it's looking possible), I am going to have three sermons this Advent season. The third week of Advent will be our annual Christmas program put on by the Sunday School. We then will be having a worship service on Christmas morning as well, but I haven't decided whether I'm going to continue from my sermon series or just do a traditional Christmas message that morning. Anyway, this is my article for the church newsletter introducing the theme of the Advent sermons.

As Evangelicals, we tend to not spend much time thinking about Mary, the mother of Jesus. We don’t want to elevate her too high or begin to believe a number of extra-biblical things about her. So we relegate her to our manger scenes, where she sits serenely (having just given birth) and remains fairly quiet.

But I think there is something we can learn from Mary. There is an inner strength that we find in her when we read about her in scripture. There is a deep faith, a great love for Jesus, and a contemplative spirit that treasures the experiences that God has given her. Scot McKnight, a professor at North Park University, has written a book about Mary entitled The Real Mary: Why Evangelical Christians Can Embrace the Mother of Jesus. In the book (which is very good), he argues that Mary is not only a woman of faith, but a woman of justice, of wonder, of sorrow, of faithfulness and a woman to remember.

This Advent season we are going to be spending some time looking at Mary during worship. We are not going to be spending time looking at the controversies that surround her and I’m definitely not going to encourage anyone to pray to her. Instead we are going to look at her faith, her sense of justice and her sense of wonder and see what we can learn from them. We can learn to have a faith like Mary’s, one which faces great peril to do what God has asked. We can learn from Mary’s sense of justice, she saw God as a God who could overturn sin in the world and bring justice to the poor and the weak. And we can learn to ponder the ways God works in our life with the wonder that Mary had. In Luke there is a common refrain in the stories we hear about Jesus’ birth and childhood: Mary pondered these things in her heart. We can learn to do the same.

So I encourage you to come on a journey with me this Advent season. I encourage you to come back 2000 years with me as we look at the life of a young woman who answered God’s call to a life of faithfulness. We will see that it was a difficult path that Mary took. We will see that when she said “yes” to God, she gave up a lot in her life. She would eventually see her son die a horrible death at too young an age. But Mary’s faith is what allowed God to send his Son into the world and for this we are very grateful. So, let us follow the path that Mary trod. Let us learn from her, not because she is better than us, but because she is one of us, one of us who allowed God to truly work in her life. And let us hope to do the same in our lives.

Micah 4:1-5, Micah 5:2-5a "Heavenly Peace"

I'm going to begin this morning with words that are not my own. They belong to B. Francis Morlan and they are from an article written about the story behind "Silent Night"

The story has become yet another chapter in the book of Christmas legend.

The year was 1914 and soldiers on both sides of the battlefield somewhere in France were enduring a dark and frozen Christmas Eve night. World War I -- the Great War, as it was called -- eventually took the lives of more than 10 million people. But it is doubtless that the mostly-young men of that Christmas Eve were contemplating much more beyond their longings for home and warmth and family.

When soldiers on the German line placed candles on small Christmas trees and raised them above their trenches it touched the hearts of their enemies. These men -- thousands of them on both sides -- spontaneously began to sing the carols of Christmas.

What began in those moments became the legendary Christmas truce. Weapons were put down, men ventured from their fortifications and gathered in No Man's Land to make note of the season together. They exchanged small gifts after agreeing to a truce so that all could celebrate the season.

And so for a short period of time, no shots were fired. The following day, men who only hours before fought fiercely now stood side by side and buried their dead. Together, with heads uncovered, they held a service to memorialize their fallen comrades. Before departing for another frozen night in the trenches, a solitary voice began to sing Silent Night, in French. He was joined by another voice -- this one singing in German -- the words of a hymn known and beloved by all.

Together they contemplated ‘heavenly peace’.

-From “The True Story of Silent Night” by B. Francis Morlan

I. Micah and Peace

The book of Micah is an important book, for it prophesied the coming Savior who would bring about a world of peace. And yet, when we look at the world since Jesus came, I have a hard time seeing the peace that was prophesied. Nation rises up against nation and battle it out. Currently we are in another year of the great War on Terror. But even when nations are not attacking nations we see that our world does not have peace in it. For when we look around us on this day we see neighbors out to do each other in, we see broken families separated by hate and pain and loss we see everything around us but peace. Oh, don’t get me wrong. Often at Christmastime we do our best to pretend that this is not the case.

Back, where I grew up, there are a lot of woods. And as I grew up a lot of the woods were cut down, clear-cut. Now let me tell you that the hills and mountains can be so majestic with the greenery up and down them, but then you will come to some bald section where all you see is stumps and fallen trees and it is simply ugly. When a part of the mountain is clear-cut it takes a beautiful thing and makes it horrible, at least to look at. But I remember driving to one of the clear-cut areas when I was in high school after a snowfall, I think it was with my parents. It was no longer ugly. It actually looked pretty. The white snow covered all the ugliness and smoothed it out so it wasn’t jagged and all of a sudden something that had looked ugly to me now actually looked pretty good. That is usually how we define peace. We hide the anger and the warfare and put something over it so it doesn’t show up… but the ugliness is still there and as soon as the snow melts it will be back. This is what possibly, probably, happened that Christmas night in 1914. War stopped one night in some battlefields so that people could think of peace and pretend it was there before they got back to war the next day. This kind of peace is good. It helps people to stop and take a break and see a glimpse of what it is that we have to look forward to. But it is no heavenly peace.

You see, Micah 4 isn’t talking about a Christmas truce. What Micah 4 is talking about is a Christmas, the coming of a Savior, that will bring everlasting peace to all people and all places. What Micah is talking about is heavenly peace that is brought by the Prince of peace. What Micah is talking about has not come yet, though every now and then we catch a glimpse of it.

II. Jesus knew no peace

I began with a Christmas story that talked about the disconnect between what we celebrate at Christmas and what the world we live in is really like. As we looked at the soldiers who were to be fighting each other, they decided that, at least for one day, the hope of Christmas was greater than the reality they were living in. If you don’t mind, I’d like to tell another Christmas story now:

The king was worried. The people he ruled over were a pretty simple people, but they had deep-held beliefs, and they believed that a king would be coming who would free them from the rule of him and his people. This could not happen. The king even became more worried when a group of foreigners came and told them that the king had been born. What was this king to do. He turned to experts in the beliefs of the people he ruled over and had them tell him where this new king would come from. They scoured through their writings and prophecies and came across the scripture passage that we read this morning: “And you, Bethlehem, in the land of Judah, are by no means least among the rulers of Judah; for from you shall come a ruler who is to shepherd my people Israel.” Bethlehem, a mere six miles away from his throne in Jerusalem. Of course, this king we were talking about was King Herod and the people he ruled over were the people of Israel and the new king he was worried about was the Messiah, Jesus. And so begins a life on the run for Mary and Joseph and their young child, Jesus; as they flee to Egypt and then move back to Nazareth.

This Christmas story comes from the gospel of Matthew and isn’t quite as poetic or peaceful as the story we get in Luke where angels sing to shepherds about peace on earth. In Matthew we see that Jesus did not know peace himself at the time of his birth, but rather found himself fleeing with his parents to avoid being put to death by someone who was threatened by what it was that Jesus represented.

It is, perhaps, good and even a bit of a relief to know that the peace that Micah promised is not something we missed. It is not like Jesus brought about peace with his birth or with his life and since that time we somehow lost it or messed it up. No, the peace that Jesus is to bring has not come yet. The Prince of peace came to this world and the world didn’t want him and his parents had to flee with him just to keep him alive.

And I think that perhaps true, heavenly peace often finds itself in this situation. It finds itself having to flee because the world is just not interested in peace. I also think that perhaps this is why so many of the good Christmas songs are bittersweet. Think about it for a second. Yes, there are a few good ones that are upbeat and fun, but the songs that really catch you at Christmastime, both the hymns and the fun songs, often have an underlying sorrow to them. There’s I’ll be home for Christmas… if only in my dreams. White Christmas has the same melancholy flavor to it. And O Little Town of Bethlehem and What Child is This are two good examples of the traditional carols that are talking about something as joyous as the incarnation but do so in a sort-of sad way. I think the reason for this is that Christmas truly is a bittersweet holiday. It is a celebration of something amazing and wonderful and miraculous that happened. But it is also an acknowledgement that we still have something to look forward to. As we have spent this Advent season looking at Old Testament prophecies about the coming Messiah, we realize that Jesus did not fulfill the prophecies to completion during his life on this earth… there is something more coming, there is something to look forward to.

III. Advent People

I like to refer to us, to Christians, as Advent people. We are looking forward to something in our world, in our lives, that hasn’t yet come. Tonight and tomorrow we celebrate one of the great mysteries of our faith: the birth of our God as a baby in a stable 2000 years ago. There truly is magic in the Christmas story and in the celebration of it. We catch a glimpse of the heavenly peace that Micah promises as well as the worship of the angels and, best of all, we get to see that God just refuses to do things in a way that would make sense to us. But Christmas isn’t the celebration of the end of the story. Neither is Easter. Jesus, in his incarnation, in his life and teaching, in his death and resurrection, was just beginning his work in this world. We trust, we believe, that we have something great to look forward to. Jesus is going to bring true, heavenly peace to this world! Christ is going to bring an end to our pain and suffering! As Advent people we don’t just spend this season looking back at what has happened, we don’t just try to catch the traditions of our parents and grandparents and try to make this Christmas like the one that we remember from our childhood. No, as Advent people we look forward to what is ahead. We definitely remember and celebrate the past, but we look forward to what God has promised. We live with expectation, with excited anticipation, with bated breath because we know that the first act was great but the finale will be truly glorious.

The hope that we celebrate this advent season is that we will know peace. The peace will not be an earthly peace but a heavenly one. It won’t be a peace that hides our differences and pretends everything is fine even though it is not, it won’t be a peace that is forced on people against their will. It will be a true peace, it will be an end to warfare between nations and between people. This is worth celebrating. It is worth trusting. It is worth praying for. So let us join with those who have gone before us and call out for Jesus to come and bring his peace to this world. Amen.

Malachi 3:1-4 "Refiner's Fire"

As many of you know, I’m into swords. I’ve got to say that one of the things I find most interesting about swords is the way they are made. You see, nowadays you can get a catalogue or go to a cutlery store and pick out a nice looking sword made from stainless steel. The swords are actually advertised as being stainless steel as if this were a good thing. The problem is that they aren’t really swords. They are decorative objects that are made in the shape of a sword. You see, the blades are just cut out of a piece of stainless steel. Because of this the swords are about twice as heavy as a sword their size should be. Yes, they look good, yes they polish up nice, but as swords go they are pretty much worthless.

But you can also find catalogues that have swords made in the real fashion. These swords are not polished and nice. You actually have to regularly oil them and maintain them so that the blades don’t rust. But these swords have been refined, they have been made in the traditional way, which means that they are lighter than the modern, stainless steel, equivalent and yet they are stronger. And the thing that makes them strong and light is the refining fire that they are beat out in. It is when they go through the fire that they get their strength. It is when they are refined that they become what it is that they are designed to be. The refining fire is what makes a sword a sword and not just a decoration. It is the refining fire that makes the Christian the Christian and not just someone going through the motions. You see, you can go through the motions, you can say the words, you can act out your faith and fit in with many other Christians. But it is only when you’ve been through the fire of your faith, when you’ve faced trial and temptation, when you’ve had to let it all out, it’s only then that you truly are the Christian you claim to be.

I. The Messenger

Today again we look at an Old Testament prophecy that talks about the coming of Christ. Today again we see that what was being promised isn’t exactly what we’d expect. Today again we realize that God keeps his promises to his people, though not really in the way that they expect or want.

The scripture begins by referencing a messenger who will prepare the way for God. This messenger refers to John the Baptist, who prepared the way for Jesus’ ministry on earth. He was about the same age as Jesus as we discover in Luke that Mary and Elizabeth were both pregnant at about the same time. But John the Baptist must have begun his ministry at an earlier age than Jesus because he was well known as a prophet and a preacher before Jesus began his teaching. John, the messenger who prepared the way for Jesus, is an important part of the story. He is featured in the beginning of each of the gospels. Mark, Luke, and even John really begin by talking about John the Baptists ministry or birth or purpose before they even come close to introducing Jesus.

John the Baptist is important, he is the beginning of Jesus’ ministry, he is the one who prepared the way for Jesus. And here in Malachi as well as in Isaiah 40, John is referred to as a messenger. His importance is in his message. And his message is one that was needed to prepare the way for Jesus. So what is this important message that begins each of the gospels, that allows the world to be ready for Jesus’ incarnation, for Jesus’ presence? Well, it’s described in slightly different ways in each of the gospels, but it is the same message.

Matthew says that John’s message was simply this: “Repent, for the kingdom of heaven is near.” Matthew says that “people went out to John from Jerusalem and all Judea and the whole region of the Jordan. Confessing their sins, they were baptized by him in the Jordan River.” (Matt. 3:2,5,6)

Mark says that “John came, baptizing in the desert region and preaching a baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of sins.” Mark goes on to say that “this was his message: ‘After me will come one more powerful than I, the thongs of whose sandals I am not worthy to stoop down and untie. I baptize you with water, but he will baptize you with the Holy Spirit.’” (Mark 1:4,7,8)

Luke tells us that John “went into all the country around the Jordan, preaching a baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of sins.” (Luke 3:3)

The gospel of John doesn’t really tell us about John the Baptist’s message, but rather tells us that he testified concerning Jesus, the Word, saying, “This was he of whom I said, ‘He who comes after me has surpassed me because he was before me.’” (John 1:15) In the gospel of John we see that John the Baptist was all about taking the limelight off of himself and directing it to it’s proper place, to the Son of God.

So, what is the messenger’s message? It is really quite simple when you put the gospels together, for they are really saying the same thing. John’s message was that we need to repent for our sins and turn from them. His message was that we need to be baptized. And his message was that one greater than him was coming who would do things that he could not even imagine.

So, how did John prepare the way for Jesus? I think the first thought might be that he prepared the way for Jesus by telling people that Jesus was coming. This makes sense, but I’m not sure that it is really the part of his message that was preparing the world for Jesus. Rather I think it is the other part of his message that does so. The other part of John’s message is that we are called to repent and turn away from our sins.

II. Know the Need

John, in his call to repentance, makes us aware of our need for a Savior. I believe that I have described before what the meaning of the word repentance is. It is one of those church words that means some theological term and therefore loses some of its meaning because we have made it so theological. But repentance basically means to change your mind. It means to turn around and head the other direction. In the Old Testament, when the people of Israel were traveling to the Promised Land, they angered God and God told Moses that he was going to destroy them. Moses pleaded for the people of Israel and we are told that God repented of his anger and decided to give them a second chance. This doesn’t mean that God’s anger was a sin and he repented because he had been in the wrong. Rather it is saying that God changed his mind. He had decided upon a certain course and he chose to go the opposite way instead. Usually when we think of the call for us to repent we think that it means that we are to be sorry for our sins. But this is not repentance. It is choosing to turn away from our sinful ways and head in a different direction. And this is precisely what John the Baptist called for the people of his day, and also calls for us, to do.

John is telling us of the need we have. He is reminding us that we like to head off in wicked directions. He is sharing with us our need to repent. He is preparing us and our hearts for Jesus by reminding us that we need Jesus. John isn’t giving us the answer to the problem, he is just reminding us of the problem. He is reminding us that we are sinful beings, in need of a Savior. John’s message prepares us for Jesus’ message by bringing us to our lowest, by showing us how incapable of goodness we are by ourselves. John’s message, by itself is quite depressing, for it leaves us trying to turn from our sins and finding ourselves unable. But then Jesus enters the scene and meets the needs that John has reminded us we have.

III. Jesus, the Answer

John has prepared us for Jesus. And Jesus, through his incarnation, through his life and teaching, through his death and resurrection, offers us the path to true repentance. Jesus’ death and resurrection doesn’t make sense if you don’t understand our need for it as John shares it. John’s call to repentance is impossible to truly follow if we don’t have Jesus to live that out for us and sacrifice himself for us.

I want to go back to Malachi 3 again. You see, it begins by talking about a messenger who will prepare the way. But then it tells us that, “suddenly the Lord you are seeking will come to his temple; the messenger of the covenant, whom you desire, will come.” This is a different messenger. This messenger of the covenant is Jesus himself. And his coming isn’t necessarily going to be the wonderful thing that we all look forward to. Let us continue in Malachi, “who can endure the day of his coming? Who can stand when he appears? For he will be like a refiner’s fire or a launderer’s soap. He will sit as a refiner and purifier of silver.”

It doesn’t sound like the most comfortable process, does it? And yet this is what we are told that Jesus is and does for us. Again, this only becomes the good thing that it is when we accept John the Baptist’s message that tells us of our need to repent. But when we do repent, when we do turn ourselves over to Jesus, we discover that he is a launderer’s soap, that he is a refiner’s fire. And this whole Christianity thing doesn’t seem like the most wonderful thing in the world after all.

But let me tell you about this refiner’s fire. You see, not only is Jesus the refiner’s fire, he went through it himself. At the beginning of his ministry he met with John the Baptist and he was baptized even though he had nothing to repent for. And at the end of his ministry he died the death of a criminal though he had done no criminal act. The refiner’s fire that Jesus puts us through; he went through it himself. He went through it and suffered and died for our sake so that we would not have to deal with the flames. Jesus took that fire upon himself, though he did not have to, and Jesus offers us salvation from our sins because of what he did. But then Jesus tells us that if we truly want to follow him, we are going to have to go where he leads? Jesus doesn’t promise us complete prosperity and ease of life. What Jesus does promise is a life that will have suffering in it, a life that will have difficulty, a life of pain and trouble, but a life that is good.

God always likes to twist things around and catch his people by surprise. He offers us a chance to follow him, but he tells us that this will be like sending us through a refining fire, like brushing us with a hard soap. But the difficulty, the fire, the soap will not be there to get us down or to hurt us. It will be there to make us stronger, to help us grow closer to him. If we pay attention to the message of John the Baptist, we realize our need for Jesus. If we accept John’s words we acknowledge our need for refining. And when Jesus comes and offers us a life of following him we discover that though this life may be hard, it is the most wonderful thing we can do to follow him. Amen.

Jeremiah 33:14-16 "Awaiting the King"

The holiday season is upon us. Actually, it’s been upon us for a while now. Last weekend, when we were in California, Lisa and I went to look at some baby stores to try out more strollers and cribs and things. Actually, more often than not, Lisa went to look at baby things with her sister and I found a bookstore to spend my time in. In the midst of this, we re-discovered the craziness of stores at Christmastime. At one point, needing to buy some batteries, I waited in line for twenty minutes just to ring up an order.

But I must say that all the hustle and bustle around the holiday season troubles me. It troubles me greatly. I think that as we run from store to store and shop to shop we miss the point of what Christmas is really about. Yes, it’s neat to receive gifts from those you love. It’s even more special when you find the perfect thing for someone else who you love that shows them how you care. But the gift giving and the decorations are really secondary to what we are celebrating on Christmas. Christmas is a time to celebrate the truth of Jesus’ birth. But that birth, for it to truly be the special thing that we long for it to be, needs to be seen in a bigger picture. You see, the people of Jesus’ day had been waiting for a Messiah for centuries. They had been expecting, longing, trusting that God would send a savior. What Christmas really is is a celebration of the fact that God keeps his promises.

I. What we Await

As we begin this season of Advent, I want to talk a bit about what it means to trust someone. You see, Advent is all about trust. Not directly. As we look at each of the four advent candles we discover that they call attention to different things that we should feel as we await the celebration of Jesus’ birth: faith, peace, love, joy, hope. For some reason, one I still don’t fully understand, the third candle, the joy candle, is pink. But when you move past these individual candles you discover that the advent season is about waiting. It is about anticipation. It is about celebrating something that hasn’t yet happened. Therefore, it is about trust. Trusting is believing in something though you don’t have proof of it. Trusting is taking someone at their word. Trusting can be hard. It can be particularly hard when that person has failed the trust before. If someone lies to you it becomes much harder to trust them. You can easily forgive them for their lies, but you will be less trusting of their words in the future. Thankfully, we have a God who does not lie to us, who is faithful to keep his promises, who deserves our trust completely.

This advent season we are going to be looking specifically at some Old Testament promises that God made to his people, Israel. We are going to see what it is that they awaited in Jesus. This advent season we are going to look at the bigger picture of the world that Jesus came into. Jesus wasn’t just another baby born to parents 2000 years ago. He was special, he was unique. Of course, you say, he was born of a virgin. But that isn’t itself what makes him special. What makes Jesus special is that he was the answer to a promise. God promised to send a savior to his people and he did, he sent his own Son. Again and again, in Jesus’ birth and throughout his life you will hear the words, “this happened to fulfill the prophecy.” Jesus was God’s fulfillment of a great promise. God made these promises to his people and he called for them to follow him and trust that he would keep his promises.

For the people of Israel, this life of trust was a long and difficult road. They went through much and waited and waited for a Messiah. In the scripture we read this morning we hear one of the promises that they are given in the midst of that long and difficult road.

“In those days and at that time I will make a righteous Branch sprout from David’s line; he will do what is just and right in the land. In those days Judah will be saved and Jerusalem will live in safety. This is the name by which it will be called: The Lord Our Righteousness.”

No wonder the people of Israel were looking for a savior who would be a king and deliver them from their enemies. That seems to be what God is promising here. And yet, Jesus is the fulfillment of this promise. Jesus is the righteous Branch that sprouted out of David’s line. He is the one who did justice and righteousness in the land. How did he do justice and righteousness? By sacrificing himself for each of us. He saved Judah, Jerusalem and all the world; just not in the way that the Israelites were expecting.

God made promises to the people of Israel and God answered those promises in Jesus. But many of Jesus’ day did not accept Jesus as the answer to God’s promises because he was different than what they expected. I fear that we might have the same problem. We currently trust God and in doing so we have decided that we know how it is that Jesus is going to return. We take scripture and break it apart and come up with ideas about what it all means. But in the end, what we are called to do this advent season and throughout our lives is to trust that God will bring about his will in his time and his way.

II. Future Promises

We know that Jesus is going to return. In Revelation particularly, we have that return described to us. And, oh, it is described as a glorious return. He will return from the sky on horseback and the whole world will see him and he will bring his kingdom. He will create a new heaven and a new earth and we will live in his presence forever more. But sometimes we seem to think that we are just to wait until that kingdom comes. We pray in the Lord’s Prayer, “your kingdom come on earth as it is in heaven” and we think that means that we are praying for the end of the world so that Jesus can return. But Jesus’ kingdom is more than that which we have to look forward to. It is here and now and we are to be sharing it with those around us. But where is it? We still don’t see it in the midst of the darkness that we find in this world. We still don’t see it because we are too busy running around trying to get all our Christmas shopping done. The kingdom is found where we find justice and righteousness. These are the things that uphold Jesus’ kingdom. These are the things that will show it so that we can see it. And it is also found in love.

So, lets not wait too long for Jesus to fulfill that promise. He has already begun to do so. And we are to be the fulfillment of that promise for each other and for the world, and even for the people of Israel. We are to live lives of justice and lives of righteousness. We are to live lives of love. This is how we will find ourselves as a part of Jesus’ kingdom. This is how we will find ourselves as a part of the promise.

We believe that Jesus fulfilled the promises that God made in Jeremiah. We believe that he answered the needs of his people. But we also believe that he continues to fulfill that promise. We also believe that the promise is for us and we can wait on the Lord to bring his kingdom to this earth. When you pray the Lord’s Prayer, asking God’s kingdom to come here on earth, know that you are a part of that kingdom. When you receive communion, Jesus’ body and blood, know that you are receiving a piece of the promise that God has made to you.

This holiday season, this Advent, I encourage you to step back from the busy-ness that you see around you. I encourage you to step back from the consumerism that we find in the stores. A great way to do this is to take a special time through the Advent season to sit down and spend with God. This last Wednesday night we made advent wreaths at the church. Many of you went home with beautiful wreaths and devotional books to take you through advent. I encourage you to sit down starting today and throughout the season with your family and take the time to celebrate advent. Light the candles and read the devotionals and remember that God keeps his promises. He kept his promises to the people of Israel by sending them Jesus and he will keep his promises to each of us. If you weren’t here on Wednesday night, I have more devotionals left, feel free to pick one up from me as you leave worship today. Let us spend this Advent season focused on Jesus and on God, the true promise keeper. Amen.

Luke 1:39-56 "From Despair came Hope"

This year, my advent series is incorporating the work of someone else, so I am not comfortable posting it as my own. Therefore I will be posting my sermons from Advent 2 years ago. This one is from December 21st, 2003.

When I turn on the radio station during the Christmas season and hear Christmas songs, I am struck by the bittersweet sound of them. This is a time of rejoicing and celebration. This is a time to sing upbeat songs like Joy to the World… yet many of the songs both in the religious carols and the fun Christmas songs are sung in minor keys and have this melancholy feel to them. “I’ll be home for Christmas” has this sad overtone in it that states that I probably won’t be home for Christmas, but I will at least be there in spirit, so celebrate even though I am not going to be with you. My mother’s favorite Christmas song is called “Stop the Cavalry” a song about WWII and asking Winston Churchill to stop the battles so that the singer can go home to his wife who has been waiting for him three years long in the nuclear fallout zone. It is an odd song.

We have the same in our Christian music collection. Two of my favorite Christmas carols are “In the Bleak Midwinter” and “Lo, How a Rose Er Bloometh”. Both in minor keys and with this sad undertone to them. Now there are good upbeat songs for Christmas, and we can celebrate with those also, but I think there is a reason for the bleakness of many Christmas songs. Christmas is a time of hope. It is a time where we hope for things to be better than they are. Hope acknowledges the state that things are in and does not ignore the problems of the world. But hope trusts that God will do something to change the world and make it into a better place. Hope has a bittersweet taste to it because it recognizes the troubles that surround it. So as we hope on Christmas, we sing songs that acknowledge the bitter as well as the sweet. A good Christmas song will not be all sweet, but the good ones are not all bitter either. They acknowledge the trouble, in the case of “I’ll be home for Christmas” they acknowledge the fact that the singer probably won’t be able to make it home to their loved ones for the holiday. But they also leave the hearer with hope, telling the hearer that if the person is unable to make it home (which they are going to try to do to the best of their ability), they will at least be there in their dreams… in spirit. Hope in the midst of despair.

I. Despair

We have spent these last four weeks, this advent season, remembering what it is that Christ brought to this world with his incarnation. He brought so much that I chose just a couple areas to talk about… We have talked about music coming out of silence, we have talked about Jesus’ light shining forth in a world that loves darkness. We have talked about God’s promises and how he always stays true to them even when we live in uncertainty. These are only the beginning and do not really do justice to that which the incarnation brought to the world… but they are a start. God was made man. The divine became mortal. God entered his creation as a part of it. The night that Jesus was born was a holy night, a night specially filled with God’s glory. Now you all know that Jesus was not born on December 25^th. We don’t know when he was born, but we chose as a church hundreds of years ago to set aside a day in December to celebrate his birth. The end of December is a time of hope. Days are now getting longer and spring is approaching once again. It is not here, but it is in the near future. And so, each year we come together to celebrate the miraculous wonder of Jesus’ birth and to open presents and sit around a Christmas tree and do a number of things that make the holiday special for each of us.

But we remember that Jesus coming into the world was just the beginning, and the culmination of what we are celebrating this Christmas season comes in our celebration of Easter, when we celebrate Jesus’ return from the dead, Jesus’ resurrection. I have been encouraging you these last weeks to not only think of Jesus entering this world, but also the miraculous changes when Jesus enters your heart, how he changes and makes you complete. So today we are going to spend time talking about how God takes a place filled with despair and fills it with hope. And to do this we are going to look a little bit at Jesus’ mother, Mary.

One thing that I love about the Christmas story is the same thing I love about the whole story of Jesus. God worked in the life of Jesus in unusual ways. God continued, throughout Jesus’ life to turn people’s expectations on their head. More, he continued to use seeming defeats to bring victory. This is true in the Christmas Story almost as much as in the crucifixion. God caused an unwed girl to become pregnant. He also timed this so that the unwed girl would be traveling with her new husband (who almost divorced her for being unfaithful to him) when she was supposed to deliver this child conceived if not born out of wedlock.

Jesus was born into scandal in a part of the country his parents were not familiar with. Women were stoned for what happened to Mary. Joseph could have called her out and made a spectacle of her and she could have been killed… Joseph wasn’t the kind of man to do this, so instead he thought of divorcing her in secret so that she could have a better chance, but God explained to Joseph what was going on and he stayed with her. But people in the time knew how to count and figured out that Jesus was probably not Joseph’s son. So, among those who know Joseph and Mary, Jesus was born in disgrace, and more than Jesus being disgraced by this, Mary would have been talked about with ridicule and shame. Yet here, in today’s scripture we read Mary’s praise psalm: “My soul glorifies the Lord and my spirit rejoices in God my savior… From now on all generations will call me blessed, for the Mighty One has done great things for me— holy is his name.”

This praise psalm doesn’t come from what God has already done. For God has caused Jesus to be born into scandal. Mary sings this song of praise because she knows what God is going to do through Jesus. Because she knows that Jesus is going to be the Messiah that was promised. Because she knows that she will bear the light of the world to the world. Mary believed all these things, she trusted all these things because she had hope.

II. Hope

I Corinthians 13 tells us that there are three things that we must have as followers of God. These three are faith, hope and love. We spend a lot of time on faith… for we know that it is by grace we are saved, through faith. We know that faith is the thing that brings us into relationship with God and we know that this faith is not of ourselves, it is a gift of God. We spend a lot of time on love… for Jesus tells us the greatest commandment is to love the Lord your God with all your heart, all your soul and all your mind… and the second greatest which is like it is to love your neighbor as yourself. But then we come to hope. Throughout the Bible, when hope is talked of, we are told that people place their hope in God… they trust God to do something for them that they are unable to do for themselves. Faith is belief in, love is longing for, and hope… hope is trusting.

Hope acknowledges your own inadequacies, hope acknowledges your own weaknesses, but hope trusts God to be greater than those inadequacies or weaknesses. Hope sees the world for what it is, a messed up place where sin runs rampant and we are easily distracted away from our faith. A place where we think that love is about what makes us feel good instead of something that gives to others without thought of what it will receive in return. But hope sees past this world, it sees past the present. It sees the possibilities and it trusts the promises.

This world could easily fall into despair. It would be quite simple. We see the continuation of war… after each victory, there seems to be more bloodshed. We see this country continue down a path that seems to be pushing us farther and farther from God. We see in Europe a post-Christian society where people by and large don’t think about spiritual things at all and we see our country heading that same direction. We deal with bills and medical problems and the stress that our jobs place upon us. We see the divorce rate go up and materialism grow in our society. This is all happening. This isn’t me trying to make you all feel bad about the situation… this is the way things are at this time. And there are two responses we can have to it. The first is to despair and figure that God has lost, the world is going to be turned over to secularism and we have, as a church, become obsolete. This despair is a viable option and some have decided that it is all that is left to us. These people have given up on God and given up on the church… often they have given up on themselves. In some ways I don’t blame them. If you are one of these people I don’t blame you. If you are relying on what we as individuals can do, if you are relying on human abilities, this is the only option truly open to you. But I want to tell you about the second option.

The second is to have hope, trusting that God will work wonders in us and through us. Hope does not deny the problems we deal with, it just trusts that God is greater than these problems. God is greater than any of these problems.

And therefore we have Mary singing in a place of despair about God’s greatness. Hope is what allows song and praise when things aren’t going the way we want. The apostles, after Jesus had ascended into heaven, found themselves in prison at times and dealt with horrible things, yet they sang from their prison cells… because of hope. Hope is what allows someone to enter into the darkness with a small light, trusting that the light will be enough. Hope is what we hold on to as we wait for God’s promises to be fulfilled.

III. Response

But hope does not and cannot come from ourselves. We don’t create hope and we don’t hope in ourselves. Hope is a gift from God, it is something that comes to us, like faith and love, because of his grace. Hope is not something that we can build up ourselves by keeping our thoughts uplifted. Hope is not having a rosy attitude in the face of any problem. Instead it is something that we can ask God to give us, so that we not fall into despair.

Hope calls for response, it calls for us to do something. It is something that we have received from God, and we find that we must always act upon the things we receive from God. God never just gives us something to play with and keep for ourselves. No, God wants us to use the gifts he gives us, and use them to be a light in this world. Also, God’s gifts, be them hope, love or faith, grow the stronger as they are used. Just like muscles in our body… if you exercise them, they will grow, but if you don’t they become weak. So we are called to exercise our hope… do some hope pushups.

And there is an important way to exercise our hope. John Weborg talks about this in the most recent issue of the Covenant Companion in his column. He states that prayer is the most hopeful act a Christian does. Prayer… our way to exercise our hope. Prayer is coming before the throne of God in hope that he will listen and act upon our needs. Prayer is trusting God to stay true to his promises. Prayer involves praising God… remembering how it is that God has been good to you and thanking him for this. Prayer involves calling to God to ask him to forgive us for our sins, this is a hope directly in the power of Jesus and a hope in the salvation that we are promised. Prayer involves petition, praying for God to touch the world around us with his power. This is all about hope that God hears us and that God knows what is best for us and that God will act for us when we ask him. Prayer is an act of faith and it is also an act of love, but it is all about hope.

These last four weeks we have been celebrating Advent: a time of preparation for Christ’s coming. On Thursday we will be celebrating Christmas… the actual celebration of Christ’s birth on this world. But these last four weeks have been a time to remember the importance of prayer, the importance of hope. We are not there yet. The world around us is in ruin… and nothing we can do will fix it. But God has promised to do miraculous things in this world and God can do these things. So let us be in prayer for the world around us. Let us be in prayer for those around us who need help. Let us be in prayer for ourselves, that God heals us of the things that we are struggling with. Let this prayer come from hope, hope that is from God and hope that is in God.

And living in that hope, we can join with Mary in her song, a song praising God and paying attention to the great things that God has done, as well as talking about the great things that God will do. This Christmas, I pray that we all are filled with God’s hope. I pray that we are able to see the great things that God has done, and through grace we are filled with a hope that allows us to call out to God in prayer for the world that needs him so much.

Isaiah 40:1-8; Mark 1:1-8 "From Uncertainty came Promise"

This year, my advent series is incorporating the work of someone else, so I am not comfortable posting it as my own. Therefore I will be posting my sermons from Advent 2 years ago. This one is from December 14th, 2003.

“I promise.” Two little words with so much power. Quite often we think that they are synonymous with “I swear”, but they are not. When you swear to something (which we are not really supposed to do because we are always to tell the truth) you are swearing to the truthfulness of what it is you are about to say. A promise is much more than that. You don’t promise about a truth that you need to convince someone of. Rather, when you promise, you are agreeing to do something; you are making a commitment; you are setting your feet upon a certain path. Promises come in all shapes and sizes. There are promises that we make and receive without thinking, casual promises that we don’t give much thought to. These are the things that we agree to do (and often in our minds we’re just agreeing to the possibility of doing them). I made a promise to our cat a couple nights ago. We had been out all day so she had been locked up all day and when we got home I told her we wouldn’t lock her up any more that night. Thankfully, cats can’t hold us at our word, cause she started acting up later on and we had to put her in her room or possibly see the Christmas tree come tumbling down.

There are other promises that we make that are more far-reaching… like the ones made on our wedding days, or the ones we make when we enter into a contract with someone.

The problem with promises nowadays is that we don’t pay much attention to ones that are kept. Instead we focus on broken promises. We have grown used to broken promises, we let ourselves expect people to break their promises, and we feel that there is a place where we can get away with breaking our promises… especially if we are making them to our cats.

Yet we serve a God who keeps promises. He has made numerous promises to people throughout history. He has made promises to you and me. And he has yet to break a promise. So, this morning, let’s forget about all those promises we have made that we haven’t followed through on; let’s forget about those promises that have been made to us which we hold against people. Instead let’s focus on real promises, the promises of God, the promises that have been fulfilled throughout history and will be fulfilled in God’s wonderful time.

I. Uncertainty

Music out of silence, Light out of darkness, and now promises made and kept to a people whose lives were full of uncertainty. This advent season we are looking at the change that Christ brought into this world. We are looking at the fact that the world changed when God sent his Son to be a part of it. There is a joke about how children look at their parents and grandparents and look at the television shows that their parents and grandparents watched and they wonder if there was color when their parents and grandparents were growing up. The movies and television shows were in black and white… perhaps the world they grew up in was black and white.

I don’t wonder this about my parents or my grandparents… but I do wonder about those who lived before Christ. Now, honestly, I know there was color before Christ, but I wonder if it was less bright, I wonder if the world was less alive. When God becomes human and dwells on the world he created, there’s got to be something in the world that changes.

But Christ coming to the world on Christmas morning, though it did change the world is not the only thing that changed. We each are changed when Christ enters our lives and becomes a part of our life. We don’t come to church on Sunday because it’s our responsibility, we don’t come here because it’s what we are supposed to do. We come to church to celebrate with each other the change that Christ has made in each of our hearts… and we come to church to open our hearts to God so that he can change them more. If you don’t know this, if you have yet to ask Christ to change your heart, then you’re missing out, you are lacking something that is vital, and I would love to share that vital thing, the presence of Christ with you.

Today we are going to talk about how Jesus brings promise to our lives where there was uncertainty. And as I have these last two weeks, I am going to begin, briefly, by talking about the lack of promise, uncertainty.

Uncertainty is a horrible place to live in. It is a place where we all actually do live at different points throughout our lives. We are uncertain about so much in our lives. We are uncertain about our jobs, whether we will have good crops this year, how our children will turn out. We are uncertain about our health, about our futures, and often we find ourselves uncertain about our relationship with God.

We are not the first to feel this way… people throughout history wondered about all of these things. The world Jesus was born into had these same uncertainties and others. They worried about the hostile nation, Rome, that was ruling them. They worried about whether God was going to answer his promise, whether God was going to send a Messiah which he promised. They also worried about themselves. They worried about the laws that they were supposed to follow, whether they could save themselves or not; whether they could be good enough to earn salvation on their own; whether God loved and cared for them.

One can be overwhelmed by uncertainties, by questions, by worries. The uncertainties, if we allow them, can make our lives quite bleak and lead us to despair, which we will be talking about next week. But there is hope, which we will also be talking about next week. And the hope comes from promise. Not human promises, ones made by fallible people who are not always ready to hold to the things they promise, but heavenly promises that will not easily be broken.

II. Promise

In the passage that was read this morning from Isaiah, we are introduced to a people who were in need of promise. We are introduced to a nation who is in exile, who is paying for sins committed and cannot find comfort in anything… And God makes a promise to them through Isaiah… God promises relief, physical relief. God’s promises are not pie in the sky promises, purely spiritual. They are promises that affect our daily lives. So God promised to the exiled people of Israel that they would be free from the exile, their hard service would come to an end. Past what we read this morning we are shown a God who will come in power to rule and he will reward those who are his people.

The people in Isaiah are a people living in a time of uncertainty, they are a people living in toil and trouble, in pain. And God promises redemption. God promises to come to them himself and to change their world. This is obviously a prophecy and a promise that God is interested in fulfilling. And we see the fulfillment of the promise, or at least the initial fulfillment of it, in the gospel.

Mark begins his gospel not with Jesus’ birth nor with Jesus’ childhood. Instead he begins it with the one who came before Jesus, John the Baptist. And the gospel begins with the promise that was made in Isaiah, showing that it is being answered in the events chronicled in the gospel. Isaiah’s prophecy, Isaiah’s promise was that a messenger would come preparing the way. Preparing the way for what? For the glory of the Lord to be revealed. The promise in Isaiah is actually greater than that, though. It includes a promise of comfort for God’s people, a promise of God’s glory shining forth for all to see, a promise that the suffering that God’s people were in the midst of would come to an end. What wonderful promises… they seem to tie in quite well with what Jesus brought to this world. The glory is there (as it seems to continue to show itself when we talk about Jesus). So is the comfort and peace.

It’s important to look at the people as they lived in expectation of the promise. There were promises made, and the people believed these promises with certainty. Uncertainty is an ugly place to live, it also is something that we don’t need to live in in every part of our lives. We are used to broken promises. We are used to people making promises that they have no intention of keeping. Or we are used to people intending to keep promises, but then failing to do so. But God’s promises are not like that. God’s promises are always kept.

My parents spent much of their early adult life as non-Christians. My grandmother spent the whole time praying for them. When God touched their lives with his glory, and they came to know him, my father called my grandmother to share the good news with her. He was a bit worried because he thought she might get so excited she might hurt herself. So he had her sit down and told her that her daughter, my mother, had accepted Christ and was again a part of God’s flock. My grandmother did not leap for joy, she didn’t shout out in excitement. Instead, she sat there calmly and said, “I knew it would happen. I’ve been praying for it daily and God is faithful in his promises.” That is a faith and a trust in God that is powerful to me… mostly because it came from my grandma, but there is definitely a strength in it. My grandmother had known that God kept his promises, she had seen this throughout history and throughout her own life, and she trusted God to continue to do that very thing.

Each of the gospels in the New Testament are about God keeping his promise. And they each begin differently in their desire to show that God does keep his promises. Luke tells of the birth and childhood of Jesus, showing how it is true to scripture. Matthew begins with a genealogy, sharing with the readers that Jesus is the promised descendant of David come to be king. And then wise men come to worship this king. John ties Jesus’ coming to the creation of the world… which is important because one of the first promises God made was at the fall when he promised that the seed of Eve would conquer Satan… something that is fulfilled in Christ.

But Mark doesn’t want to begin right away with Jesus. Instead he uses the one crying in the wilderness to prepare us for Jesus. I love the image we have of John the Baptist… clothing made of camel’s hair, a leather belt, eating locusts and wild honey… a wild man prophet. This wild man prophet is out in the wilderness preaching that people need to repent from their sinful ways and turn back to God… and as this wild man prophet is the beginning to an answer to God’s promise, he is making his own promises for God. For he shares that one will come after him who will baptize not with water but with the Holy Spirit. John the Baptist is already trying to help people to better understand the promise that God has made. He is sharing that the answer to the promise will come, but not as people expect. They expect a king to rule over Israel, and Jesus will be doing so much more than that.

III. Fulfillment

Jesus was the answer to God’s promise. His coming to this world answered a promise made at the beginning of time, and again and again. Jesus, in everything he did throughout his life and death and resurrection, was keeping promises that God had made. That is why throughout the gospels we hear it said that, “This was done so that the scripture may be fulfilled.” This began with Jesus’ birth which we celebrate in a week and a half, and continued through his death and resurrection. But these moments were not the only place Jesus was fulfilling prophecy. He also did so throughout his life in the teachings he taught, in the healings he performed, in his very presence in the world. What is important to pay attention to, though, is that Jesus wasn’t the answer that the people expected. The people expected an earthly savior to come and rescue them from Rome. Jesus fulfilled the promise of God, whether the people were expecting him to or not. Jesus kept the promises that God had made.

But Jesus not only kept the promises of God, he made new promises to his followers. And how do we know that these promises will be kept? Because we saw God and Jesus keep promises before. So like my grandmother before me, I trust the promises that God has made to us all and to me. I trust the promise he made which says that he has a plan for me, personally. This is a promise he made to each one of us, and it is a powerful promise, a promise of empowerment, a promise of meaning and vision for our lives. I trust the promise that he made to care for us, like he does for the birds and the flowers. When we pray the Lord’s Prayer we ask for God to give us our daily bread… we ask God to give us the things that are necessary for us to not just survive, but thrive. I pray this prayer knowing that God will answer it. I trust the promise that Jesus made as he ascended into heaven… He promised to be with his people, to be with you and me until the end of the age. He promised to be an active part of the world, he promised to work in our lives and in the lives of those around us. I trust that this is a promise that Jesus keeps. I trust in the promise that Jesus made that stated that when two or more are gathered in his name, he is present. I believe that Jesus is present here now because of that promise. There are promises that God made throughout scripture. He will fulfill them.

This holiday season, in the midst of uncertainty, I encourage you to trust the promises that God has made to you. Believe that God has the power and the desire to bring them to fulfillment. God’s timing is odd, and he doesn’t always fulfill promises they way that we expect… but the God who was born in glory, and at who’s birth the angels sang, this God will be true to his promises. Amen.

John 1:1-4; 3:19-21 "From Darkness came Light"

This year, my advent series is incorporating the work of someone else, so I am not comfortable posting it as my own. Therefore I will be posting my sermons from Advent 2 years ago. This one is from December 7th, 2003.

There is something about darkness which is difficult to deal with. When you cannot see what is around you, your eyes play tricks on you. I remember as a child worrying about the shadow of a tree limb outside my bedroom window. I knew what it was, for it was not menacing in any way in the daytime. But at night with the shadows and darkness, it was just eerie. The way the shadow played against my curtains caused it to look like a nose. And I wondered what kind of creature outside would have such a nose. Darkness is the time that we dream up the monsters that we are most scared of. I remember nights where I needed to go to the bathroom in the middle of the night but was scared of what might be under my bed, so I would jump as far away from the bed as possible to make sure that I would be safe. I never had this problem in the morning, when it was bright enough to see. Darkness is the time that we allow our doubts and worries to overwhelm us.

I personally was scared of the dark for a long time… until I realized that darkness is as light to God and just because my eyes could not see that which was around me clearly, that didn’t mean that it was different. It’s like the Veggie Tales song which tells us that “God is bigger than the boogie man”. We have the light of Christ in us and with us. We have his radiance shining ‘round about us. Though at times it might seem dark to us, it is not dark to God and he will shine our way.

I. Darkness

Here we are in the second week of Advent. We are looking at the way that Christ has affected this world and changed it. We are remembering that things grow and change when Christ enters into them. This is true of the world. The world changed in a miraculous way when Jesus entered it 2000 years ago. Angels sang, a star shone down where it hadn’t been before, promises were answered and a people without hope found it again. But this is also true of us as individuals. When we ask Jesus into our hearts, our lives change. They become something wonderful. We discover that there are things that we had been missing, but now we are complete. Last week we looked at music and how important it is to our relationship with God and how it came out of silence when Jesus was born. This week we are looking at light and as with music and silence, we will not truly be able to understand light, God’s light, until we understand darkness.

In Genesis we are told that the earth was formless and empty and darkness was over the surface of the deep, and the Spirit of God was hovering over the waters. And God then started the creation with a command, saying, “Let there be light.” And creation listened to God, as it always does; and there was light, and it was good.

So at the beginning of the Bible, at the beginning of time, there was darkness and God brought light… What is important to note is that the darkness, again, did not mean God was not present. We are told very specifically that God was there in the midst of the darkness, for the Spirit of God was hovering over the waters, but it was darkness.

By the third day of creation God decided that there needed to be light in the darkness of night as well so we ended up with the stars and the moon. This is important because it meant that we as well as all of creation would be protected from absolute darkness, though on some cloudy nights, we get pretty close.

Now we tend to look at darkness as representing evil and light as representing good, especially when we read about it in the New Testament. I understand this way of reading it, but I’m not sure it is the most accurate way to look at it. In John 3 we see this relation between darkness and evil very clearly spelled out. If you read verses 19 and 20 you hear a direct correlation. “Light has come into the world, but men loved darkness instead of light because their deeds were evil. Everyone who does evil hates the light, and will not come into the light for fear that his deeds will be exposed.” It seems that this passage is correlating darkness and evil… but it is not. John 1:5 tells us that “the light shines in the darkness, but the darkness has not understood it.” I grew up hearing that translated as “the light shines in the darkness, but the darkness has not overcome it.” Interesting that overcoming and understanding have the same meaning here.

Darkness isn’t a synonym for evil. Rather, darkness is a hope that we have to hide our evil from God. So when we sin we hope that the darkness, the lack of light will hide our sins from God. We hope to be like a military unit and use the darkness to hide our movements, to disguise what it is that we are doing. We think we can be stealthy with our sin, because of the darkness. And that is why those who love evil seek the darkness. But we are not able to hide our sins in the darkness, no matter what we believe. We were shown in Genesis 1 that even in the darkness of primordial earth, God was present.

Darkness isn’t about evil as much as it is about lack of light, lack of the ability to see clearly, lack of understanding. Darkness isn’t something… it has no form, it has no essence, it has not substance of its own… instead, darkness is a lack of something. When you take light away darkness comes in. When you add light, darkness retreats. You adjust darkness by adjusting light. You cannot make darkness brighter… but you can make light dimmer.

Living in darkness hoping to hide our sins, hoping to hide our imperfections, hoping to hide our faults from God and others and often even from ourselves, keeps us away from the light. We might think that we are protecting ourselves from God’s eyes, hiding our sins from God. This just isn’t the case, it’s a fool’s errand. So let’s not make the mistake of those who love evil. Let’s move out of the darkness and into the light… into the light of Jesus.

II. Light

So Jesus is born, and with Jesus light comes into the world. John 1 is very much tied to Genesis 1. Both begin talking about the beginning… and God in the beginning. They both begin by talking about the creation of the world… but John 1 spiritualizes the creation of the world in a way that Genesis 1 does not. We are told that Jesus, the Word, was with God in the beginning, during the creation, and we are told that Jesus was a part of the creation. “Through him all things were made… In him was life, and that life was the light of men.” Jesus is the Word and in Jesus there is life and in that life which is in Jesus we see light. In John 9 Jesus tells us that he is the light of the world. He tells us this in the midst of healing a blind man. But he also talks about how it is that he is the light of the world when he is in the world… and he talks about night coming. I think this is interesting because it makes me wonder what happens to Jesus’ light when he leaves the world. When he ascends back to heaven and leaves the church in charge.

That is also very clear throughout Jesus teaching. Jesus tells his disciples in the Sermon on the Mount that they are the light of the world. We, you and I, are the people who are to bring light to the world around us. We reflect Jesus’ light in our lives and bring light to those around us. Today’s bulletin cover quotes from Isaiah… “Arise, shine, for your light has come.” Our response when we see the light of Jesus, the light that is Jesus, is to shine ourselves… to reflect that light to the world around us. We are human moons, reflecting the sun’s rays in the night. The sun is bright and shines throughout the day. It gives off its own light. It’s a giant nuclear ball of fire that gives light and heat and even radiation. But the moon does not give off any light. It is just a big rock in the sky. Yet we see light when we see the moon. Where is that light coming from? It’s coming from the sun. The moon does not give off its own light it gives off the sun’s light. That is our responsibility. We are moons in the night. We are able to see the sun and reflect the sun in the darkness. The light banishes the darkness, it makes it fade.

Christ is the light of the world. He brings things out into the open. He makes things understandable. We, as Christians are called to step into that light, to enjoy the heat and the clarity. We, as Christians are called to bask in the light of Christ. What a wonderful thing to do… basking in the light of Christ. But a part of that basking means that we are also called to be reflectors of that light, shining it into the shadows where people are trying to hide from God, hide from us, hide from each other, and hide from themselves.

How do we reflect God’s light? By living the life that Jesus called us to. By being a positive influence in the world around us. By sharing our faith, our stories of how God has worked in our lives with others. By loving those around us with a godly love. By caring for those who need care.

III. Glory

Now when we think of light and we think of the Christmas story we often think of the Bethlehem star. The star which guided the unspecified number of wise men, not kings, to the place of Jesus’ birth… sometime in the first two years of Jesus’ life, not on the night he was born. It’s amazing what a song can do to get it wrong. But this is not the only instance of light in the Christmas story. The scripture in John tells us that light was born that night in Jesus… and it compares Jesus coming into the world to the coming of light from the darkness at creation. And light also plays a role in the story of the angels, which we read last week. A quick reminder… this is a story we hear year after year so I hope you know it very well. Shepherds watching their sheep; an angel appears… calms them down because they are so scared… tells them about a king born in Bethlehem wrapped in swaddling cloths and lying in a manger… is joined by a heavenly host praising God and singing… Glory to God in the highest and on earth, peace to those with who God is well pleased… the angels leave and the Shepherds go to Bethlehem to see this wonder…

When the angel appeared, though, we are told that the glory of the Lord shone round about the shepherds… notice how when we talk about the Christmas story we fall into the fancy language, “shone round about,” and “the shepherds were sore afraid.” A better way to say this is that when the angel appeared there was a bright light and the shepherds were scared to death. Light, here in the story of the shepherds, is described as glory, and for good reason.

Glory is pure. Glory is radiant. The glory of God shines with an intensity that we cannot understand. Glory is not a physical light… though I believe that there was a physical light accompanying it with the angels. Glory is a spiritual light. It is a light that is holy, is pure, is clean… and it is a light that makes holy, makes pure, makes clean. But glory is not always a physical light. Jesus talks about the Glory of God when he raises Lazarus from the dead. When Jesus tells people to roll away the stone so that Lazarus might come out, people question him, even Martha, Lazarus’ sister. Jesus responds to her question with this phrase, “Did I not tell you that if you believed, you would see the glory of God.” The glory of God can be seen in actions… it can be seen in the miracles that Jesus did… it can be seen in the wonder of something that seemed impossible but wasn’t. God’s glory shines forth when Jesus’ kingdom grows.

Advent… Christmas… is a time of wonder, it is a time to acknowledge how much greater God is than us and celebrate that greatness of God. But though we celebrate the greatness of God, glory shows up in the small things… so does light. Glory showed up in a manger with a group of refugees crowded in a stable. The light of the world entered the world in such mean estate. So this advent season, look for God’s glory not only in the big things like Jesus’ second coming… look for God’s glory in the small things… and look to bring God’s glory to those around you. Be a moon, reflecting the light of Christ, the glory of God, throughout the darkness. Help those in need, care for the poor and the sick, love the sinner, share the gospel story with those who have not heard it, be a friend to the unsaved so that they might see Christ’s light reflected in you. Reflect Christ to those who live in darkness. Quite often, they will not understand the light… they will wonder what the light is about… but soon, with the help of the Holy Spirit, they will discover that life is much easier to live in the light. Let us all live in the light and invite those around us to live in the light this holiday season. Amen.