Immanuel

Sermon for Green Lake Church of Seventh-day Adventists for Sabbath, December 23, 2017

A week or so ago I stepped into the Urban Bakery, a coffee shop at the corner of Green Lake Way North and Wallingford Ave on the north side of the lake. It was early. The streets were pretty deserted. The cafe was empty except for two other old guys. While I was waiting on my sandwich, I eavesdropped on their conversation. As is common these days, their talk focused on their worries about national affairs. At one point, one of the old guys said, “I'm not worried about myself. I've had a great life and I'm pretty well situated. It's my grandkids and the world they will inherit. That's what I'm worried about.”

At some point, as we mature, our ambitions and even our desires change. We turn from fascination with our own successes, our own triumphs, to the triumphs and successes or our children and grandchildren. Our highest ambition is to see the well-being of our grandchildren.

We endow scholarships and chairs at universities. For the kids.

We fight for the preservation of public land so succeeding generations can taste some of the wildness and beauty that nourished our own souls.

We fund programs that help disadvantaged children because we hope that hidden somewhere among those anonymous faces is the genius who will cure some incurable disease, the composer who will write the music that thrill audiences for ten generations.

Full human maturity comes when our own lives are nearly forgotten in our ambition and longing and joy in the children yet to come.

This happy ambition for the next generation is expressed throughout the Bible story and reaches its climax in the Christmas story.

The prophet promised:

Unto us a child is born, unto us a son is given, and the government shall be upon his shoulders.

His name will be Wonderful, Counselor, The mighty God, The everlasting Father, The Prince of Peace.

Of the increase of his government and peace there shall be no end.

The fruit of his reign will be everlasting justice. (Isaiah 9:6-7)

The Gospel says:

Shepherds were out in the field, keeping watch over their flock by night. Suddenly the angel of the Lord stood before them, and the glory of the Lord shone around them, and they were greatly afraid. The angel said, "Do not be afraid, for behold, I bring you good tidings of great joy for all people. Today, in the city of David, a Savior is born, Christ the Lord. And this will be your sign: You will find a baby wrapped in swaddling cloths, lying in a manger." Then vast choir of angels appeared, praising God and singing, "Glory to God in the highest, And on earth peace, goodwill toward men!" (Luke 2:8-14)

The prophet promised:

The Lord Himself will give you a sign: Behold, a virgin will conceive and bear a Son, and shall call His name Immanuel. (Isaiah 7:14)

The Gospel says:

An angel of the Lord appeared to Joseph in a dream, saying, "Joseph, son of David, do not be afraid to take to you Mary your wife, for the child in her womb is conceived of the Holy Spirit. She will bring forth a Son, and you are to name him Jesus, for he will save His people from their sins." Thus was fulfilled the word of the prophet, “The virgin shall be with child, and bear a Son, and they shall call His name Immanuel," which is means, "God with us." Matthew 1:20-24

A prophet said:

A Star shall come out of Jacob;

A Scepter shall rise out of Israel, (Numbers 24:17)

The Gospel says:

After Jesus was born in Bethlehem of Judea in the days of Herod the king, behold, wise men from the East came to Jerusalem, asking, "Where is the newborn King of the Jews? We saw his star in the East and have come to worship him." When these Wise Men finally found their way, they entered the house and when they saw the child with his mother, Mary, they fell down and worshiped Him. They had opened their treasures and present to him gifts of gold, frankincense, and myrrh. (Matthew 2)

One of the notable women in the Old Testament was named Hannah. She was a beloved wife and was childless. In response to her prayer and the blessing of the high priest, she became pregnant and gave birth to Samuel, one of the greatest of prophets. In celebration, she offered this pray/song. She sees the impact her son will have on his world and celebrates it as if it were already accomplished.

Do not act with pride and haughtiness.

Do not speak in arrogance!

For the LORD is a God who knows what you have done;

he has judged your actions. (In the birth of this miracle child)

The bow of the mighty will be broken,

those who stumble will be strengthened (because of the birth of this miracle child)

Those who were well fed are now starving,

those who were starving are now full.

The childless woman now has seven children,

and the woman with many children wastes away.

The LORD gives both death and life;

he brings some down to the grave but raises others up.

The LORD makes some poor and some rich.

He brings some down and lifts others up.

He lifts the poor from the dust and the needy from the garbage dump.

He sets them among princes, placing them in seats of honor.

For all the earth is the LORD's, and he sets the world in order. …

Those who fight against the LORD will be shattered.

He thunders against them from heaven;

the LORD judges throughout the earth.

He gives power to his king;

he increases the strength of his anointed one." 1 Samuel 2

Then Mary is visited by an angel and told she, too, will have a miracle child. She echoes the words of Hannah in her prayer/song.

"Oh, how my soul praises the Lord. 47

How my spirit rejoices in God my Savior! 48

For he took notice of his lowly servant girl,

and from now on all generations will call me blessed.

For the Mighty One is holy, and he has done great things for me.

He shows mercy from generation to generation to all who fear him. 51

His mighty arm has done tremendous things!

He has scattered the proud and haughty ones.

He has brought down princes from their thrones and exalted the humble. 53

He has filled the hungry with good things

and sent the rich empty away. Luke 1

Now, I will light the final candle of this Advent season, the Christ candle, the light expressing our conviction that the baby born in a barn and cradled in a feed box was the embodiement of the fullness of God. And we pledge ourselves to see in every infant the embodiment of heaven's promise and its care our highest duty.

Lighting the Center Candle, the Christ Candle

Christ is born.

God is with us.

The Manufacture of Joy

Sermon for Green Lake Church of Seventh-day Adventists
for December, 16, 2017

Texts:  Psalm 16:5-11, Luke 2:1-10

A couple of weeks ago I headed into the bedroom. It was probably 10:30. I was beat. I was thinking only of sleep. Karin was already in bed, reading her Bible. I dropped my head on the pillow, closed my eyes and headed off to oblivion.

A couple of minutes pass. I'm almost asleep. But Karin interrupts. “Why do you think God chose the shepherds for the angels to visit?” I tired ignoring her, but it didn't work. She was wide awake with excitement about the story of angel choirs and shepherds.

Shepherds lived at the bottom of the social pyramid of the time. They were at the bottom of the social ladder. Nobodies. Angels interrupted their night. Gleaming, dazzling angels. Singing Joy to the World. How cool was that? How wonderful?

Karin couldn't sleep thinking of the wonder of that fantastic encounter. And she wouldn't let me sleep because the magic of the story was too rich to be enjoyed alone. So she peppered me with hypothetical questions—why did God do that? What did I think the shepherds thought? What kind of faith did the shepherds have? What did I think of the shepherds? Why did God choose these guys to receive this heavenly favor?

I grunted one-syllable answers to her theological ponderings. Trying to give her a hint. Finally, I promised I would check on the shepherds in the morning, but for now, I insisted, I was going to sleep.

The next morning I did check in on the shepherds. In the freshness of dawn I pondered the message of this sweet, beautiful story.

That night there were shepherds staying in the fields nearby, guarding their flocks of sheep. Suddenly, an angel of the Lord appeared among them, and the radiance of the Lord's glory surrounded them. They were terrified, but the angel reassured them. "Don't be afraid!" he said. "I bring you good news that will bring great joy to all people. Luke 2:8-10 NLT (Accessed through Blue Letter Bible.com)

After a few more words of explanation, this single angel was joined by a vast choir singing,

"Glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace to those with whom God is pleased." Luke 2:14

When God steps into our world, it is good news, it is an occasion of joy.

A little later in this same passage in the Gospel of Luke, we read that Mary and Joseph went to the temple in Jerusalem to dedicate Jesus when he was six weeks old. While they were there, two old people came up to them. One was Anna, a very old widow.

She had been told about this baby in a vision. She came into the temple and headed straight for the Holy Family. I imagine her taking the baby in her arms and cooing and ahhing over this beautiful baby, checking out his tiny fingers, examining his cheeks and nose and lips, stroking his forehead.

She was in an ecstasy of joy. Finally, reluctantly, she returns the baby to Mary and shuffles out of the temple to spread the news. He has arrived. The Messiah has been born. Our thousand-year-old hopes are turning into concrete reality. It's happening!

We can see the sparkle in her eyes, we can hear the excitement in her voice.

The Jesus story is happy story. The Jesus mission is the creation of joy. The story of the birth is tidings of great joy. And this is our foundational story. We are people of the happy story.

One test of the authenticity of our Christianity is the presence of joy. Does our faith make us happy? Does our faith help us make others happy? Righteousness leads to joy.

In the ancient story of Job, Job complained that he had been treated unjustly by God. He suffered disaster and catastrophe that were completely undeserved, in fact, Job protested, they were the opposite of what he deserved. At one point in his complaint, Job lists the marks of his righteousness. One of the definitive marks of his righteousness is this:

I assisted the poor in their need

and the orphans who required help.

I helped those without hope, and they blessed me.

And I caused the widows’ hearts to sing for joy.

Job 29:12-13

What does it mean to be righteous? To create joy in the lives of others, especially the poor and needy. This is the authentic Christian connection of the gift-giving at Christmas time. The point of the gifts to create joy in the lives of others. And naturally when we work joy in the lives of others, it has a reflex effect on us.

Wednesday night I was sitting at the kitchen table doing my year-end giving. I was going through my list of favorite charities, sending fifty dollars here, a hundred there. In the great scheme of things my few dollars will not do much, but it was a great joy to sit at my computer and spread the joy. I imagined my dollars doing a little something to make the world better, to ease the challenges of a widow in Bangladesh or a student in India. I imagined my dollars helping to protect some of my favorite wild places. Giving made me happy.

Terri has helped us as a congregation connect with some special families at Greenwood Elementary School which is located just two and a half miles from where we sit. Most of these families are immigrants, people who have landed here among us fleeing unimaginable danger or crushing poverty. Life where they used to live was so bad that a life of poverty and hard work in Seattle was worth going half the world away from home.

Many of us have given money to help ensure the children of these families have enough to eat during the holidays. Your dollars will create joy among those who receive them. Your giving has already created joy in your own hearts. That's how we are made. When we water the souls of others our own souls are watered.

Joy to world. Joy to you. Joy to them. This is the religion of the baby Jesus. This is our religion.

Some years, when my girls are home, they go on a baking spree. The kitchen is turned into a factory of joy. They make batch after batch of cookies and bars and other confections. They discuss the various neighbors they are baking for. The Poiriers, the Popkes, Peggy, Louise, Jim and Connie, MaryAnn and Don. Who is allergic to nuts? Who likes blackberries.

They are not merely making cookies, they are manufacturing joy. Their own joy in giving. The joy of others in receiving. This whole business of giving and receiving takes us to the heart of the Gospel. This is the central meaning of the Christmas story.

God in Christ gave us heaven's best. In the giving God tasted unfathomable joy.

And we who receive the gift?

We are filled with joy.

Joy to the world. Joy to you and me.

The very essence of Christmas is the manufacture of joy.

Mary, Did You Know?

Sermon for Green Lake Church for Sabbath, December 9, 2017.

Texts: Ruth; Matthew 18

All week a song has been playing in my mind:

Mary did you know that your baby boy will one day walk on water?

Mary did you know that your baby boy will save our sons and daughters?

Did you know that your baby boy has come to make you new?

This child that you've delivered, will soon deliver you

Mary did you know that your baby boy will give sight to a blind man?

Mary did you know that your baby boy will calm a storm with his hand?

Did you know that your baby boy has walked where angels trod?

And when you kiss your little baby, you have kissed the face of God

Mary did you know,

Mary did you know, Mary did you know

The blind will see, the deaf will hear and the dead will live again

The lame will leap, the dumb will speak, the praises of the lamb

Mary did you know that your baby boy is Lord of all creation?

Mary did you know that your baby boy will one day rule the nations?

Did you know that your baby boy is heaven's perfect Lamb?

This sleeping child you're holding is the great I am

Mary did you know, Mary did you know, Mary did you know

By Mark Lowry, music by Buddy Greene. 

The Christmas story is a fantastic fusion of ordinary and extraordinary, of pedestrian and sublime. It is the literary equivalent of jalapena chocolate covered caramels or a sweet-and-sour curry. A curious combination of opposites.

Reading through the grand visions of the Hebrew prophets, we are primed to expect the birth of a king. And we think we know what a royal birth looks like?

Instead when the actual birth happens it is a peasant birth. A working class couple making do in a difficult situation. The baby has feed box for a bassinet, a stable for a nursery, cows and horses for attendants.

For two thousand years Christians have practiced giving our attention to this glorious confusion. This little person who nurses and sleeps and cries and poops and pees is, in fact, the incarnation, the embodiment of God.

Mary, did you know that when you kiss you little baby you have kissed the face of God?

The question itself highlights how preposterous the claim is. Every mother looks at her baby and knows that this child is a magnificent addition to the grand history of humanity. This little one is destined for greatness. But Mary, your son will be greater than all other sons, greater than even a mother's heart can imagine. When you kiss your baby you are kissing the face of God. Mary can you know that? Is it possible for even a mother's heart to hold this truth?

A baby. A regular, ordinary little human being. This child is the fulfillment of the visions of Isaiah and Zechariah and Daniel. This child is the ultimate embodiment of the hope and values that served as foundations of the Jewish temple service and monarchy.

As wonderful as this story is, it is not the first time the Bible features the birth of a child as a grand forward move by the kingdom of heaven.

The story of Ruth and Boaz is one the great romances of all time. In the first chapter of the story we are confronted with the utter blighting of Ruth's life. A Jewish family moved to the nation of Moab because life was unsustainable in Israel—Dad and mom and their two sons. Elimelech, Naomi, Mahlon and Chilion. In their new country they settled down. Life goes well. Elimelech's business prospers. But the good times were interrupted. Naomi's husband, Elimelech, died. But her sons, Mahlon and Chilion took after their father. They were industrious and smart. The family acquires a enough wealth to support a marriage. And both sons marry. Happily.

Then the sons die. Leaving Naomi widowed and childless—the most vulnerable, precarious possible situation a woman in that society could find herself in.

Naomi decided to head home. She sent her daughters-in-law back to their families and she made plans to go back to the land of her brothers and cousins hoping to find some corner that will allow her to live out her days of grief. But Ruth refused to abandon her mother-in-law. So the two women traveled back to Israel together.

There in that foreign country, the homeland of her mother-in-law, Ruth goes to work to provide for herself and her mother-in-law.

She was noticed a good man who also happened to be wealthy. Romance blossomed. There was a wedding.

To wrap up the story, instead of writing, “They lived happily ever after,” the ancient writer reported, “Ruth had a son.” At news of the birth the neighbor ladies crowded into the house. As grandmother Naomi cuddled her grandson against her bosom, these neighbor ladies exclaimed, “Naomi has a son again!”

The writer goes on to point out that this child of the foreigner Ruth, this grandson of Naomi, proves to be the grandfather of the famous King David. This half-breed child is the ancestor of the most iconic persons in all Jewish history.

Who is this baby? The son of a Moabite woman who according to Jewish law was excluded from Jewish citizenship for ten generations. Who is this child? The grandfather of King David, the George Washington or Dwight Eisenhower of the Jewish people.

The story of Jesus brings together similar contrasts. Another favorite song asks, “What child is this who laid to rest is sleeping?” Who is this baby?

The Hebrew prophets cast two dueling visions of the advancement of the Kingdom of Heaven.

In Daniel Chapter Two, the kingdom of heaven is imagined as a giant stone that flies inthrough the atmosphere and obliterates all opposition and resistance. The rock grows into a world-dominating mountain. It is a picture of irresistible, overwhelming force. It's a seductive vision. Wouldn't that be nice? We imagine God showing up and smashing all the bad people, while we stand us off to the side cheering him on.

In this vision, we could imagine God as a heavenly bulldozer driver, pushing aside all obstacles and opposition.

Then we read the words of Isaiah 9.

For a child is born to us, a son is given to us. The government will rest on his shoulders. And he will be called: Wonderful Counselor, Mighty God, Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace. His government and its peace will never end. He will rule with fairness and justice from the throne of his ancestor David for all eternity. The passionate commitment of the LORD of Heaven's Armies will make this happen! Isaiah 9:6-7 NLT

God works through a king. And before the king takes the throne and leads his armies he is first a child. An infant facing the risks of whooping cough and measles. Back then before vaccines small pox and polio stalked the land snatched children from their mother's arms.

In this vision God is a mother nourishing her child, a nanny fostering the success of her young charges. We imagine God anxious and worried as he watches the death-defying antics of his son--climbing trees and throwing rocks at hornet nests. Leaping on the back of a wild horse just to see if he can hang on longer than his friends. We imagine all the ways the son's future can be ruined through physical, social , and spiritual mistakes.

In this vision, the kingdom of heaven comes through hope, a desperate, hungry hope.

God is no bulldozer driver. Instead we picture God as a coach, a math teacher, a dance instructor using every possible method to motivate and inspire her students. In this vision, God's hunger for the triumph of goodness is no less than it is in the vision of God the bulldozer driver plowing over the bastions of evil. But in this vision, God knows the longing and hunger of every parent to see the triumph, the success of their children and grandchildren.

When we live with this vision we slowly come to see children—all children, the ones who go to bed in feed boxes and the ones cocooned in the swankiest nurseries on Mercer Island, the children who already at eighteen months give evidence of precocious intelligence or musical gifts or unusual sweetness and the children who give evidence of disabilities and troubles—when we receive the Christmas vision deep into our souls children are transformed—all children. They are all ours. And we hunger for their triumph and with great satisfaction we do all we can to encourage that triumph.

In Matthew 2 we read of the Persian nobility who traveled a thousand miles to pay homage to the newborn king. All of the Jerusalem was oblivious, but these foreigners, they were open to the heavenly secrets and they came to worship.

And for two thousand years we have repeated their worship. Metaphorically, we have brought our gifts to lay at the feet of the Christ child and we take great delight in our giving.

But there is yet a more direct path to the Christ child, a path drawn on the map by Jesus himself.

Jesus' disciples asked, "Who is greatest in the Kingdom of Heaven?" Jesus called a little child to him and stood the child in their center and said, “Anyone who becomes as humble as this little child is the greatest in the Kingdom of Heaven.

Then Jesus added this:

Anyone who welcomes a little child like this on my behalf is welcoming me.

(Matthew 18:1-6)

May God grant us the ability to see with heaven's eyes, to see every child as the incarnation of Jesus. May we know that when we kiss the face of our babies we are kissing the face of God.

God grant us the courage and drive to ensure that every child is kissed with food and shelter, clean air and open spaces. May our vision of holiness include doing all that we can for all the little Jesuses God has placed in our care.