At this point, I would like to remind everyone exactly what Martin Luther King did, and it wasn’t that he “marched” or gave a great speech.
My father told me with a sort of cold fury, “Dr. King ended the terror of living in the south.”
Please let this sink in and and take my word and the word of my late father on this. If you are a white person who has always lived in the U.S. and never under a brutal dictatorship, you probably don’t know what my father was talking about.
But this is what the great Dr. Martin Luther King accomplished. Not that he marched, nor that he gave speeches.
He ended the terror of living as a black person, especially in the south.
This is a reblog of an article by my seminary professor, Bob Ekblad:
I was deeply troubled by news of this week’s killings of journalists at Charlie Hebdo, France’s beloved satirical newspaper, by two French Muslim brothers of Algerian descent, Chérif and Saïd Kouachi. I’ve been haunted by footage I saw of these gunmen’s shooting of a police officer in cold blood on a Parisian street where our good friends live and where we regularly stay. The killing of four hostages in the Jewish kosher grocery store by another jihadist activist, followed by the French police’s shooting of all three gunmen, has made this a traumatic week for France and the world.
Should we be surprised by these killings? Offense, resentment, and shame carried by many young Muslim men and others on the margins today incite rage. In this case, the rage is directed against the dishonoring gaze and mocking words of journalism that appears to consider nothing sacred, except free speech.
Ryan P. Cumming of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America has written a top-notch critical review of this book that has recently been making waves in the non-profit sector of our community. The book is quite popular and those who love it accept its conclusions as gospel truth. Cummings does an excellent job in his short review of pointing out the book’s finer points while also not glossing over its major flaws.
Most other reviewers speak admiringly of the author and his statements. The few negative reviews tend to emphasize the reviewer’s pet issues (i.e. social justice, evangelism, etc.) while ignoring the substance of the book itself. This is the first critical review I’ve seen that treats the substance of the book fairly:
I won’t dignify his words with the verb “argues” because Lupton doesn’t argue his points; he simply states them. I would be concerned that statements like this, when coupled with his criticisms of charity, would motivate more people to avoid service work in the first place than to engage in the community development he suggests…
…The difficulty here is not his rejection or support of foreign aid or welfare. There are arguments to be made on both sides of the debate. The problem is that the only apparent research Lupton draws on is Dambisa Moyo’s controversial 2009 book Dead Aid. Outside of this, Lupton appears to draw on his own experience, which I admit is extensive, but this does not make for a well-defended argument. And this is vitally necessary when making statements about both the poor and government’s relationship to them that are far from self-evident.
I am very much a product of my generation (the 1980s). I’m right on the tail-end of Generation X, not quite a Millennial.
The generation right before mine (my parents) was the first TV generation. They grew up watching television, instead of listening to the radio or reading books aloud. I remember my grandparents being scandalized by television: they thought Elvis Presley’s hip-gyrations were obscene (I’m thankful they didn’t live to see Miley Cyrus’ twerking).
The generation after mine (my kids) is the online generation. They don’t remember a time when the internet didn’t exist. Their experience of watching TV is totally different from mine as a kid. They never have to look at a TV guide or be home at a certain time to catch their favorite show, but my three-year-old already knows the difference between Netflix and Hulu (and has very strong opinions about which one is better).
My generation, on the other hand, is the Nintendo generation. We grew up slamming plastic cartridges into consoles and sitting almost motionless in front of screens for hours at a time, while our thumbs flew over the controllers at the speed of light. When Mom thought we’d had enough, she would send us outside to play in the fresh air (at which point we would simply run down the street to play Nintendo at a friend’s house).
When you grow up as part of the Nintendo generation, there are certain concepts that you just kind of instinctively understand in the marrow of your bones. Video games have shaped the way we look at reality. One such concept is the idea of ‘leveling up’ or ‘going up to the next level’.
In the Nintendo world, when a player completes a challenge (i.e. solves a puzzle, defeats an enemy, completes an obstacle course, etc.), she or he then moves on to the next challenge/puzzle/enemy, which is inevitably more difficult than all the previous ones. This is what we mean by ‘leveling up’ or ‘going to the next level.’ When you’ve successfully completed all the levels in a given program, then you can say that you ‘beat the game’.
[Notice that I didn’t say ‘win’. Nobody ever really ‘wins’ a video game because there’s no lasting reward. After all that effort: hours of stress and focus, all you really get is the bragging rights to say to your friends, ‘I beat that game.’]
Now, I want you to keep this idea of ‘levels’ and ‘leveling up’ in your mind as we turn to look at our gospel text from this morning…
Once again, we meet John the Baptist, who we previously encountered in our readings during the season of Advent. John is kind of an odd duck. John is a prophet (more like a monk, actually): he lives a simple, celibate life out in the desert, preaches to anyone who will listen, criticizes the culture around him, and invites people to take part in this cleansing ritual called ‘baptism’.
People would come to hear him preach and anyone who felt moved by what he had to say could come forward to be baptized. Their participation in this ritual washing was a sign that they wanted to commit themselves to the kind of ideals that John was talking about.
John represented a kind of ‘leveling up’ from the civil religion of his culture. For most of the people around him, being Jewish was just part of being an Israelite: it was the religion of their culture. John wanted people to take their faith seriously. He thought faith should be a decision that affected the way they lived.
John called his fellow Jews back to the roots of their faith. He wasn’t impressed by their appeals to cultural pedigree. He said to them:
“Bear fruits worthy of repentance. Do not begin to say to yourselves, ‘We have Abraham as our ancestor’; for I tell you, God is able from these stones to raise up children to Abraham.”
John was a reformer, just like the prophets Elijah and Jeremiah before him (in the Old Testament) and Martin Luther and John Calvin after him (in the Protestant Reformation).
Jesus, on the other hand, represented a kind of ‘leveling up’ that was entirely different from John’s. While John preached a message of conversion (i.e. “Bear fruits worthy of repentance”), Jesus preached a gospel of grace and inclusion.
Jesus’ ministry was one of acceptance toward those who were rejected and despised by polite, religious society. It was the “tax collectors and sinners” who Jesus chose to befriend. In the case of Zacchaeus, Matthew Levi, the woman caught in adultery, and the woman who washed Jesus’ feet with her tears: Jesus’ modus operandi seems to be “forgiveness first, then repentance”. Jesus dared to assert that salvation begins, not with human effort toward moral goodness, but with the sovereign grace of God reaching out to embrace sinners.
This message certainly scandalized the Pharisees and Sadducees, who eventually conspired to have Jesus killed, but it also confused John the Baptist himself. Sometime after John was imprisoned and Jesus’ ministry got started, John sent a message to Jesus, wondering whether he really was the promised Messiah they had been waiting for. John had expected a powerful moral leader who would “baptize with fire” and carry “his winnowing fork in his hand… to separate the wheat from the chaff.”
John thought that Jesus’ ministry would look much like his own, but bolder and more effective on a large scale. What he saw instead was a gentle Messiah, a “Prince of Peace” who revealed the heart of God to the world as Love.
Just as John had represented a kind of ‘leveling up’ from the Jewish civil religion of the first century, so Jesus represented a kind of ‘leveling up’ from the message of conversion to the gospel of grace. Jesus’ message includes John’s (just as John’s message included the Torah and traditions of the Jewish elders), but went far beyond it. The Gospel of Christ is ‘the next level’ in the religious development of Judaism, which started with God’s covenant with Abraham, continued through Moses and the prophets, and concluded with John the Baptist.
When I look around at our society today, I give thanks for the many preachers like John the Baptist who call the people of our own culture to take their faith more seriously. Like John before them, these fiery preachers rail loudly against immorality and preach a message of conversion. You can hear their message pretty much anytime you tune the TV or radio to some religious programming.
These preachers are obviously having an effect (just like John): their parishioners talk about their conversion like a “line in the sand” that separates their old life from the new. People testify about overcoming various addictions and compulsions, leaving behind lives of crime and vice, rising above challenges and limitations… all thanks to their newfound faith. Make no mistake: this is a good thing and we should thank God for it. These people have ‘leveled up’ in their understanding of God, their commitment to faith, and in their overall quality of life. John’s message makes a difference.
However, I think it would be a mistake to think that the Christian journey ends with conversion. Conversion is only a beginning. There is another kind of ‘leveling up’ for those who continue to journey with Jesus and discover in the Scriptures and the Sacraments just how deep and wide God’s love really is.
Do we dare to believe that the love of God would still embrace us, even if we had never turned ourselves around or listened to John’s message of conversion? Can we picture ourselves as the sinners who Jesus loves unconditionally, before we even have an opportunity to confess or repent? Is it possible that we really are “saved by grace alone” as the Protestant reformers so boldly declared in the 16th century?
These are big questions that have the capacity to shake the Church to its very foundations, just as it shook the religious establishment in the time of John and Jesus.
The most amazing thing about the gospel of Jesus is that you ‘level up’, not by becoming a better Christian, but by being a really bad one. It is not our spiritual success, but our failure that reveals the deepest heart of God to us.
The moment when we truly see the face of God in Jesus is that moment when we collapse at his feet, dressed only in the filthy, tattered rags of our own self-righteousness. Salvation comes to us when the saint within us is finally killed off by our inner sinner’s failure to live up to impossible moral and spiritual standards. Those are the moments when Jesus comes to us, picks us up, and carries us to the next level of spiritual growth.
The gospel of Jesus Christ is the only system I know where you succeed by failing. I have heard it said that all religion is humanity reaching out to God, but the gospel is God reaching out to humanity. St. Irenaeus of Lyons, a Christian from the second century, said it this way: “In the incarnation of Jesus Christ, God became human so that humanity might become divine.”
This morning, as we welcome several new members into our church community (two of whom are being baptized), I want to invite you to reflect again on the meaning of this sacrament:
God accepts us, claims us, saves us, cleanses us, and washes us clean in the waters of baptism. This happens long before any of us has the capacity to say or do anything to influence God’s opinion of us. The love of God in Christ is absolute, unconditional, and universal. I invite you to meditate on your own baptism today, whether you remember it or not: Imagine the water of grace surrounding you, washing you clean, and hear in your heart the voice from heaven speaking to you, just as it did to Jesus:
“You are my child, whom I love; with you I am well pleased.”
Ethiopian Biblical Manuscript. Public Domain. Retrieved from Wikimedia Commons.
A few years ago, there was a big to-do about this book (and subsequent movie), The Da Vinci Code. I won’t get into the particulars of the plot, suffice to say that it provoked a lot of big, emotional reactions from people everywhere.
On the one hand, a lot of church-folks were offended by the ideas it presented, which didn’t exactly mesh with what we had learned as kids in Sunday School. On the other hand, a lot of folks from outside the church were really excited about the book because they thought it revealed a picture of Jesus that was bigger than the one presented by traditional Christianity.
I even had one friend who said, “I knew it! The Vatican has known about this stuff all along, they’ve just kept it hidden and locked up in some secret vault so that the rest of us won’t find out about it.”
Well, I don’t think I’d put much stock in that particular theory… or in the book’s ideas about the historical Jesus (The Da Vinci Code is a work of fiction after all), but I do find the whole phenomenon extremely fascinating from a sociological point of view.
During the peak of the book’s popularity, Jesus Christ was once again on the cover of popular, secular magazines. Books were being written (and read) about him. For a brief cultural moment (and not for the first or the last time), everyone was talking about who Jesus is and what he means to the world. It was a really interesting thing to behold.
And here’s what stood out to me in that conversation:
People feel drawn to Jesus. They want to be connected to him somehow, even if they never darken the door of a church or call themselves Christians. Jesus means a lot to people. There are few, even in the non-religious world, who speak negatively about Jesus or the things he said and did. Most secular criticism is directed, not at Jesus himself, but at us Christians (and what we have done in his name).
In this morning’s gospel reading, we read about a group of people, the wise men, who also felt drawn to Jesus. Like the readers of The Da Vinci Code, these people came to encounter him from outside the bounds of conventional, orthodox, institutional religion.
In the time of King Herod, after Jesus was born in Bethlehem of Judea, wise men from the East came to Jerusalem, asking, “Where is the child who has been born king of the Jews?”
To begin with, these wise men were not Jewish. The text of Matthew’s gospel simply says they were “from the east”, which probably means they came from Persia (the part of the world we now know as Iraq and Iran). They wouldn’t have known anything about the Bible or Jewish customs. They had probably never been to a synagogue service in their life.
So then, how did they come to be aware of this miraculous birth?
“For we observed his star at its rising, and have come to pay him homage.”
They were astrologers. They studied the stars and interpreted their movements as messages from heaven. We have astrologers today who do similar work, but most of it is for entertainment via 1-900 numbers. In the ancient world, astrology was generally accepted as a form of science. Kings and generals would have depended on the predictions of astrologers for guidance.
The message these particular astrologers were discerning from the stars was that something significant was happening in the Jewish homeland. A royal baby was being born. Matthew doesn’t say why, but something in these astrologers’ hearts was stirred enough that they felt compelled to go and pay their respects to the new baby.
So, they did what any reasonable person would do: bring gifts of congratulations to the royal palace in the capital city: Jerusalem. These wise men, Persian astrologers, felt drawn to Jesus, even though they had no idea where to go or what to do when they got there.
King Herod and the Jewish leaders, on the other hand, didn’t fare much better. Even though the astrologers had gotten a little turned around, at least they were aware that something important had happened. The astrologers’ arrival woke the Jewish leaders up to what they had forgotten or neglected in the midst of their own self-important agendas.
“When King Herod heard this, he was frightened, and all Jerusalem with him; and calling together all the chief priests and scribes of the people, he inquired of them where the Messiah was to be born.”
The astrologers’ questions sent the theologians and seminary professors scrambling for answers. As it turned out, the answer they were looking for was in a tiny, little, forgotten village:
“They told him, “In Bethlehem of Judea; for so it has been written by the prophet: ‘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.'”
The arrival of these outsiders and their questions woke the Jewish religious scholars up to those parts of their own country and their own faith that they had neglected for too long. At this point, Herod and the religious leaders have an opportunity before them. Their eyes have been opened to the Messiah’s birth. They now have the chance to step outside their own selfish, little worlds and become part of what God is doing on earth. Is that what they do?
“Then Herod secretly called for the wise men and learned from them the exact time when the star had appeared.”
Instead, there is a reactionary pushback against this news of the Messiah’s birth. The powerful ones are secretly plotting and scheming, not so that they can be part of what God is doing in the world, but so that they can keep their power and maintain their privileged positions in Israel. Those who have power want to keep it, even if that means going against the very essence of what defines them as a people. They would do anything, even kill the Messiah, to maintain their illusion of power and control.
Herod is so delusional, so drunk with power, that he even starts ordering these foreign wise men around like they were his own subjects or property:
“Then he sent them to Bethlehem, saying, “Go and search diligently for the child; and when you have found him, bring me word so that I may also go and pay him homage.””
The irony here is that he is the one who is dependent on them. He would have no knowledge of this situation if it wasn’t for their pagan, foreign practice of astrology. Yet the wise men are the ones who respond with open hearts and minds. They came to pay their respects because they felt drawn by the heavens. All these secret, back-door deals combined with biblical hermeneutics and seminary professors probably seemed pretty strange to them. In the end, it seems like they (rightfully) disregarded everything Herod and the religious scholars had just taught them:
“When they had heard the king, they set out; and there, ahead of them, went the star that they had seen at its rising, until it stopped over the place where the child was.”
Does the text say that the wise men set out to follow the biblical scholars theologically correct directions? Or does it say that they went back to following what they already knew?
The answer is the latter, of course. The wise men basically took the Bible and theological training and threw it out the window. They didn’t know about all that Jewish stuff, nor did they want to. They knew about stars. So, when they set out again (probably more confused than when they arrived), they went back to working with what they knew.
One might think that such pagan backsliding would lead the wise men down the path of sin and deception. Surely, they would be lost forever in the desert, never to find the newborn king.
But that’s not what happened. The text tells us that the star “stopped over the place where the child was.” Get this: by following what they knew, they ended up exactly where they were supposed to be.
They set out on this journey in search of Jesus, and lo and behold: they found him (in spite of the so-called ‘advice’ given by powerful figures and religious leaders). And what was their reaction when they found him?
“When they saw that the star had stopped, they were overwhelmed with joy.”
Their hearts were more open than the hearts of those who had spent their lives studying this stuff.
“On entering the house, they saw the child with Mary his mother; and they knelt down and paid him homage.”
Despite their unorthodox methods and status as religious outsiders, the wise men ended up exactly where they were supposed to be: with Jesus. Their faith did not look anything like conventional Jewish faith, but it proved to be more real and more authentic than the faith of those people who were supposed to have all the answers.
I wonder whether the same thing might be true in the world today?
It seems to me, based on what I saw during The Da Vinci Code’s popularity, that there are a lot of people in this world who feel drawn to Jesus, but want nothing to do with the church or institutional Christianity. To be honest, I can’t blame them. We Christians have a lot to repent for when it comes to representing Jesus to the world. We have often attached his name to our own projects and agendas, but rarely have we acted in a way that is consistent with his Spirit. I think that is what it really means to “Take the Lord’s name in vain”: When we talk about him, but don’t act like him.
Meanwhile, those wise souls who are diligently searching for truth and love in Jesus are driven to look elsewhere because the church has done such a poor job of pointing the way to him. In those circumstances, I am not at all surprised that God is willing to reach out take hold of people’s hearts using things like astrology, science, philosophy, or other religions. I have met atheists who have a closer relationship with God than some Christians (even though the atheists would never use that name: God).
The good news in this is that God is willing to reach out to us human beings using any means necessary. As my seminary roommate was fond of saying, “God will broadcast on any antenna you put up.” Only God knows those hearts that truly seek after God. And, as Jesus himself promised: “Those who seek will find”… he never says they have to seek God in a particular way.
The challenge given to us then is this:
Are we open to what God is doing in the world? Are we open to the fact that God might show up in the least expected way, or in the least expected place? When we encounter others who might be seeking God in ways that seem foreign or unorthodox to us, do we have the faith to trust that God is working in their lives (as well as ours) to bring us all to that place where we can worship Jesus together?
Just like the wise men, these outsiders have precious gifts to bring to the table. Will we work with them and help them to open their treasure chests so that these gifts can be offered to Jesus and shared with the world?
God is inviting us Christians to open our hearts, minds, arms, and doors to those outsiders to the faith who bring unconventional gifts to the table and seek God in unorthodox ways. The question that God sets before us is not “Do we approve of them (or their strange methods)?” or even “Do we welcome/accept/tolerate them in our midst?”
The question is: “Will we travel to Bethlehem with them?”
Will we seek Jesus together as companions in life’s journey? Someone else’s journey might not look exactly like yours and that’s okay. Will we be open to the gifts that others bring to the table? Will we let those gifts challenge our structures of privilege and power? Will we let them change the way we think about church and “the way it’s always been” or the way we think it should be done?
These outsiders come to us, not because we have something they need, but because God has led them to us and called all of us to seek Christ together.
It’s a little late for Advent, but I love this article and this guy. Moderator Heath Rada lays out some of what makes our church a good one:
Heath Rada, Moderator of the 221st General Assembly of the Presbyterian Church (USA)
I celebrate the PC(USA) as a denomination that unequivocally affirms the Lordship of Jesus Christ as our Savior. Each new member, when joining the church, confesses that she or he accepts Jesus as their personal Savior. In fact, they could not be members if they do not confess that as their position. Do we state that everyone has to be a Christian to be saved? I thank God that I am not called upon to provide God’s answer to that question, for only God can give the answer. God is the judge; that is God’s job. But I do know that all members of the PC(USA) say they believe Jesus is the mandated key to salvation, and for that I celebrate our denomination.
I am grateful that the PC(USA) believes in the authority of the Scriptures as being God’s word. Anyone who is ordained a teaching or ruling elder in our denomination affirms that this is his or her belief. Does that mean we all agree on every interpretation of God’s word? No. Does anyone? But it does mean that we see the Holy Bible as the authority, and understand as much as we possibly can, though we are also told in the Scriptures that today “we see in a mirror, dimly” (1 Cor. 13:12, NRSV). I cannot attest to my interpretation of the Word as being the only one. Being a member of the PC(USA) allows us the latitude to keep on searching for the ultimate truth. Whether I am liberal or conservative, from one social class or race or another, does not matter. The PC(USA) invites us all to become a family of Jesus Christ bound together.
The PC(USA) believes in taking the Good News to all the world. Ninety-four million Christians around the world attribute the PC(USA) with being the source of their knowing Jesus Christ! Though we may have fewer full-time missionaries throughout the world today than we did 50 years ago, we now send thousands of Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) members (more than ever in our history) to serve in international missions—work missions, teaching missions, medical missions, etc. We all share in this role in ways and numbers that we never have before, and we model the Good News as we deliver needed services with our talents and gifts.
1. If you have had one or even a few people with special needs in your ministry, this does not mean you know how to welcome all. Very often when I tell a pastor about my ministry at Open Gathering they start telling me their one success story (which I do enjoy learning from), but they do not seem to understand there is more to do to welcome all. This is not unlike someone saying there is no more racism because Obama was elected president…
Luis de Morales [Public domain], via Wikimedia CommonsFrom a sermon by Bishop Fulgentius of Ruspe (early 6th century):
And so the love that brought Christ from heaven to earth raised Stephen from earth to heaven; shown first in the king, it later shone forth in his soldier. Love was Stephen’s weapon by which he gained every battle, and so won the crown signified by his name. His love of God kept him from yielding to the ferocious mob; his love for his neighbor made him pray for those who were stoning him. Love inspired him to reprove those who erred, to make them amend; love led him to pray for those who stoned him, to save them from punishment. Strengthened by the power of his love, he overcame the raging cruelty of Saul and won his persecutor on earth as his companion in heaven. In his holy and tireless love he longed to gain by prayer those whom he could not convert by admonition.
Have you ever been told that your voice doesn’t count? Have you ever been treated like you don’t matter? Have you ever felt unloved, unwanted, or unimportant?
I think a lot of us have, for various reasons. Some still receive that message today because of some physical or social characteristic like their race, gender, or sexual orientation. For many of you here at North Church, you’ve been made to feel unheard, unloved, unwanted, and unimportant because of your disability status or mental health diagnosis.
It seems like there is no quicker or more efficient way to dismiss a person’s voice in the public forum than to identify them as mentally ill. A lot of the time, when others find out that you’re a person who lives with mental illness, they very quickly seem to stop the “person” part of that sentence and just focus instead on the “mental illness” part. They don’t think of you as, “a person living with schizophrenia/depression/bipolar disorder.” No, they say, “You are schizophrenic/depressed/bipolar.”
It’s a subtle-but-vicious way of shutting down another person’s humanity and ensuring that their voice doesn’t count… as if a diagnosis of mental illness were some kind of statement about a person’s intelligence or abilities. Defacing the image of God in you is what it is.
Well, if that’s you, if you’re here tonight and you’ve been made to feel unloved, unwanted, unheard, or unimportant because of your mental illness, disability, race, gender, sexual orientation, or any other reason, I have good news for you: you’re in good company.
First of all, look at these people around you tonight: many of them have felt that way too, maybe even for the same reasons as you. Also, let’s look at the gospel reading tonight. We’re in good company with the people we read about in this Christmas story.
“In those days a decree went out from Emperor Augustus that all the world should be registered. This was the first registration and was taken while Quirinius was governor of Syria. All went to their own towns to be registered.”
This story begins with Caesar Augustus, the most powerful man in the world (at the time). He was the leader of the Roman Empire, having taken that position by murdering his predecessor, Julius Caesar. And Emperor Augustus, like a great chess master, wants to know how many pawns he has left on the board. He’s also a bit like Ebenezer Scrooge, counting his money. To Caesar, the people whose lives he controls are little more than pennies in his bank account: they’re not worth much; they’re liable to get lost in the cushions of the sofa. In short, they don’t matter; they’re not all that important.
And then the camera of our story zooms in on just a couple of those insignificant pennies:
“Joseph also went from the town of Nazareth in Galilee to Judea, to the city of David called Bethlehem, because he was descended from the house and family of David. He went to be registered with Mary, to whom he was engaged and who was expecting a child.”
And things weren’t looking too good for them:
“While they were there, the time came for her to deliver her child. And she gave birth to her firstborn son and wrapped him in bands of cloth, and laid him in a manger, because there was no place for them in the inn.”
Did you hear that? “There was no place for them.” Even those other pennies, lost in the couch cushions, were unwilling to move over and make room for these most insignificant people. They were treated like human garbage. As a result, Mary was forced to give birth like an animal in a barn.
Nearby, in the next cushion over on the same couch, we come across a few more pennies that have long been forgotten:
“In that region there were shepherds living in the fields, keeping watch over their flock by night.”
This is where we get to the shepherds: dirty, homeless people who wandered about looking for work, scamming the townsfolk, and up to goodness-knows-what in those dark, isolated fields at night. Nobody liked or trusted shepherds. In fact, a shepherd’s testimony was inadmissible in a court of law at that time. That’s how despised they were. Nobody cares what a shepherd says.
But then what happened?
“Then an angel of the Lord stood before them, and the glory of the Lord shone around them, and they were terrified. But the angel said to them, “Do not be afraid; for see—I am bringing you good news of great joy for all the people: to you is born this day in the city of David a Savior, who is the Messiah, the Lord.”
Of all people, God decides to send the angels to shepherds, the ones whose voice would count least in the eyes of the world. And what does the angel say? “To you is born this day.” Get that? To you. Not to Caesar, not to Rome, not even to the people of Israel, but to you shepherds: the least, the last, and the lost. And then, just to underline and emphasize what they have just said, the angels break out into song-and-dance like this was a Broadway musical:
“And suddenly there was with the angel a multitude of the heavenly host, praising God and saying, “Glory to God in the highest heaven, and on earth peace among those whom he favors!””
Hear it again: “Peace among those whom he favors!” And who has God favored in this instance? The shepherds more than all the rest of Israel and the world. The ones who don’t matter. This song is for them.
And the task the angels give these low-down, no-good shepherds is to go find these other insignificant people who are just as bad-off, miserable, and forgotten as they are. The angels are collecting those lost pennies together in the couch cushions, because, as Jesus would later say, “where two or three are gathered in my name, I am there among them.”
And when the shepherds went and found what they were looking for, they told their story: “they made known what had been told them about this child; and all who heard it were amazed at what the shepherds told them.”
They didn’t show up with any prior knowledge or proper credentials. All they knew was to tell the story of their own personal experience: “to make known… what they had heard and seen.”
And “Mary treasured all these words and pondered them in her heart.”
Just as Mary and the baby were meant to be a sign for the shepherds, so also the shepherds were meant to be a sign for Joseph and Mary. God hand-picked them and brought them together to be signs to each other: signs that something significant was happening and they were meant to be part of it; signs that, even though the world would not hear their voices, God heard and they are not alone.
And so, here we are tonight on this Christmas Eve. If you’ve come here tonight feeling unheard, unwanted, unloved, and unimportant, then I want you to know that you’re in good company. It means that you’ve come with Mary and Joseph to Bethlehem and are sitting with them in the straw of the stable. It means that you are walking in the fields with the shepherds, and the angels’ song is for you.
“To you is born this day in the city of David a Savior, who is the Messiah, the Lord.”
And though you may feel alone tonight, you are never alone. Though you may feel unwanted, you are loved beyond your wildest imagination. Though you may be homeless and “there is no place for you” in the inns of this world, Jesus says to you tonight:
“In my Father’s house there are many dwelling-places. If it were not so, would I have told you that I go to prepare a place for you? And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come again and will take you to myself, so that where I am, there you may be also.”
You may feel unimportant, but Jesus says, “Blimey! That’s amazing! In almost 14 billion years of cosmic history, 10 thousand years of human civilization, and 2 thousand years of Christendom, I’ve never met anyone who wasn’t important before!”
This is the truth of the gospel of Jesus Christ, the good news that turns the world upside down.
The truth of the gospel is that there are no insignificant people, which is why, when the kingdom of God comes in its fullness “on earth as it is in heaven,” and “the kingdoms of this world have become the kingdom of our God and of his Christ,” we are promised that “the last will be first and the first shall be last.”
And this seemingly insignificant little peasant baby, born in squalor to an unwed teenage mother, is the beginning of that Great Reversal.
You may be told by the powers-that-be in this world that your voice doesn’t count, but the angels are calling you to speak up tonight. Like the shepherds, you are to “make known… all that you have heard and seen”: Build one another up with your stories of faith, signs of hope, and acts of love.
And like Mary, “treasure all these words and ponder them in your heart” so that we all might be brought together, reminded that there are no unimportant people in the eyes of God, and strengthened for the task of bringing heaven down to earth in Jesus’ name.
Religion, for me, has always been an exercise in pain management.
And faith has always been a struggle.
My friends and family all must have the spiritual gift of patience, seeing how they’ve walked with me through each new crisis of faith and theological discovery: Evangelical, Charismatic, Catholic, Anglican, Presbyterian, Universalist, Liberal, Benedictine… it seems like I’m always dipping my toes into another tributary of the great Christian river. I’ve never quite felt at home.
As such, I feel like today is a holiday for Christians like me: the Feast of St. Thomas. Thomas, colloquially referred to as ‘Doubting Thomas’, is famous for his struggle with faith after the resurrection: “Unless I see the mark of the nails in his hands, and put my finger in the mark of the nails and my hand in his side, I will not believe.”
But just as surely as he lagged behind his fellow apostles in believing the truth of the resurrection, he also charged ahead of them when it came to confessing the divinity of Christ: he was the first to address Jesus as “My Lord and my God!”
In my experience, a faith that is open to struggle often ends up being deeper and wider than a faith that simply accepts what it is given without question. I wonder whether Thomas would have had his insight into Christ’s divinity had it not been for his struggle with Christ’s resurrection?
For people like Thomas and me, faith is always an open-hearted struggle, not because we are stiff-necked unbelievers, but because we so desperately want to see Jesus.
Hopping Hadrian's Wall 
