Baptized with the Spirit

A sermon based upon Luke  3: 15-22

By Dr. Charles J. Tomlin, DMin.

Flat Rock-Zion Baptist Partnership,

Baptism of Jesus Sunday,  Year C, January  13, 2013.

“He will Baptize you with the Holy Spirit and fire.”  (Luke 3.16).

Today’s text from Luke invites us to look at Baptism---even to consider again and perhaps and hopefully to renew the spirit of our own baptism into the Christian faith.  

If you have been baptized for a long time, Luke wants you to gain a very unique perspective about your baptism and what it is supposed to mean.  If you’ve been baptized recently and you are still ‘wet behind the ears,’ Luke wants to teach you something more about what that Baptism means---most importantly, that this baptism is certainly more than just about the water.

WHAT WATER BAPTISM CANNOT DO

I think I told you once this pastoral story about teaching on baptism to a church in Greensboro.   It’s worth telling again.  I was trying to make this very point, that baptism is more than about how much water we are baptized into, whether there is enough water to immerse us or only enough to sprinkle on our head.  I’m a Baptist, and I like water, but it’s still not about the water.  

I went on to tell how early Baptist in England relearned the biblical method of adult baptism from the Anabaptist, or Amish, living in Amsterdam, not because wanted to us more water, but because they wanted to try to get back to the biblical ideal, which was not about ‘water’, but about adults giving their whole lives to Jesus, and not just having baptism be a ritual in their infancy.  Early Baptists were not so much against the practice of infant Baptism, as they were for having ‘true Christians’ at church.  They hoped that getting back to the biblical forms would be followed by having people who were truly faithful because they meant what they did.

Again, I reiterated.  It wasn’t the wrongness of infant baptism, nor was it about lack of the right amount of water, but the major point was about having real, adult, Christians who truly lived their whole lives for God.  They wanted to get back to this ancient practice in hopes of having Christians who really practiced their faith.  It wasn’t about the method of baptism as much as the mode of living.   It wasn’t about the water as much as it was about the witness. 

Then, after this historical review, I told them how we only baptize practice adult baptism by immersion as Baptists, but this does not mean we are against infant baptism or other methods that other denominations use.  We only practice it the way we feel is biblical and is best for our witness.  It is still the faith and fire of God in the heart that matters most, not the water.

Hearing me say that we ‘only practice adult baptism’ a little 80 year old lady raised her hand.   She told the group, “I became a member of this church after I was married.   I grew up Methodist.  I was baptized as an infant.  Does this mean I need to be re-baptized to be a member of this church?” 

The question was directed to me, as her pastor, but as a teacher, trying to teach what is most important, I decided to pass the question on to the group.  Most of them were older folks, and most of them had grown up Baptist.  Just about every one of them thought ‘baptism’ should be done only by immersion.  If she was anyone else, like someone outside the church, they would have probably told her she needed to get re-baptized, right there on the spot.  These weren’t normally shy people at saying what they believe.  So I put the question directly to them to give them the opportunity to say what they wanted to say.  Do you know what they said?  Nothing!    That’s when I spoke up again.  “O.K.” Do you mean by your silence that you want me to ask her to be re-baptized?  Is this what you want me to do?   They still didn’t say anything.

Then I told them.  “If you want her to be re-baptized, you’ll have to do it.”  Because it is just what I told you.  Now, right here and now you have a true example of what I’m trying to say.  It’s not about the water.  It’s not about what age you are when you were baptized, nor about how much water is used, but it’s about who you are after you are baptized.  It is about how much fire there is in you for God.  If you have the ‘fire’ of Jesus’ baptism in you, you don’t need more water.  We need to let it burn.  Right?  Amen? Let the light shine, don’t put it out!  That’s how I answered.  And amazingly, they all said: Amen.  Thanks to that honest Methodist woman, we taught a Baptist church the gospel ‘truth’ about baptism.  Wow!

This is the very same kind of message John was trying to convince the crowd when he told them, “I only baptize you with water, but he will baptize you with the Holy Spirit and fire.”  Even John’s baptism by water didn’t cut the mustard.   You had to have more than water to immerse you, sprinkle you or poured upon you to be filled with the Spirit of God.  You needed fire.   So, with this introduction, let’s look closer at what John’s words might have meant then and should mean to us now.

BAPTISM AS A HOT TOPIC

“But he will baptize you with the Holy Spirit and Fire.”   No pun intended, but this sounds like a very hot topic---both to speak about the baptism of the holy Spirit and to make a comparison with fire.  What could John be saying about Jesus, about the Spirit, and about the fire that is supposed to be ‘burning’ in us?

First off, let’s talk about ‘fire’.  Fire is not a laughing matter.  I’m not making light of it.  Neither is John.   Fire is serious business.   Fire can do some wonderful things for us in life, but it can also hurt us, burn us, and even kill us.   The image of ‘fire’ is an attention getting word.  It means that something dangerous happens when people are ‘baptized in the Holy Spirit’.  But the question is, what kind of ‘danger’?

Now, let’s quickly join this word ‘fire’ to the idea of being ‘baptized in the Holy Spirit’.   That’s another ‘hot’ topic, isn’t it?  There are people of faith today, who claim that after you have been baptized with water, you need a second baptism, another baptism, and that this other baptism of fire is the baptism with the Holy Spirit.   They tell us, especially us Baptist and a lot of Methodist too, and they say that’s where this whole Pentecostal talk of “holy spirit baptism came from.  That is came out of the holiness movement in among Methodist in the early part of the 20^th century when it began with the need and belief that God could do a ‘second work of grace’ in people.  This ‘second’ work of grace came to finally be called the baptism of the Holy Spirit---a second blessing---the final work of sanctification, of holy-making that could come and should come when a person gave their life fully to God.

Is this a ‘second blessing’ that John is also talking about?  What does John mean when he speaks of being baptized with the Holy Spirit?  I want to first talk about what it doesn’t mean.

I was first introduced to the Pentecostal movement when I was in High School.   We had a Bible club at North Iredell and in that club I got to be around students who had a different upbringing than I did.  But it was not one of the other students, but it was a visiting speaker who, after speaking to our club, invited me to a meeting at a home in the Fairview section of Statesville.  I asked him about what he would be talking about and he said it would be about the cross.  This is what he also what he spoke about in the meeting and I was ready to hear more.

When I arrived at the meeting, we all sit around in the living room and the speaker began to share.  As he ended another good talk, he asked us to bow our heads and pray with him.  In the middle of his prayer he cut loose speaking in a language I did not understand.  I knew my French was bad, but this wasn’t anything close to a real language.  I listened, but I also felt very uncomfortable.  Even at that young age, I knew the Bible’s teaching about ‘tongues’, and this guy did not go about it the right way.  He didn’t give us any kind of ‘interpretation’ at all. 

After the prayer was over, the speaker came to me and asked me how I enjoyed the service.   I didn’t want to tell him what I felt, so I asked a question: “What kind of language was that you were speaking?  Did you even know what you were saying?”   He said that he didn’t even know what language it was---he said it was angelic or something.   I told him that it sounded ‘demonic’ to me, and I left.

Today I kind of regret that I called that guy’s religious expression ‘demonic’, but he was older than me and I felt he was trying to drag me, as a teenager into something I did not need to get into.  It wasn’t that I wasn’t serious about following Jesus, but it was that I was serious, very serious, and all this gibberish didn’t sound serious enough.  It just seemed fake, synthetic, unnecessary, and for a serious, intelligible, and understandable witness to the world, it just sounded too strange and weird.  If it confused me, I knew it would confuse others.  And that is where I left it.  I put filed all this Pentecostal teaching about the Baptism of the Spirit as a misunderstanding, a misinterpretation of what it was supposed to really mean.

I remained as far away as possible from this kind of Holy Spirit talk until I ran into it again on the mission field; and it Germany of all places.  I thought all Germans were intellectual, academic and unemotional.  I figured they would not allow any such nonsense as this. 

But one day, the Church leader and myself were discussing having New Year’s prayer service with the Lutheran and Catholic pastor’s in our community.  There were less than 500 Christians in our town of nearly 50,000 and it was important for us to get together and to show and share our faith.  We getting to know each other and the Lutheran pastor looked at us and said, I don’t know much about Baptist.  What kind of Christians are you?  Before I could try to get a few German words out, the Church leader who was with me, and had some theological training came right out and said: “We Baptist are charismatic Christians.”   I thought I would fall out of my chair.  I couldn’t believe that this guy; this smart, intelligent, and well trained Baptist layman would say something like that.  Immediately, I gave my reply: “Well, he might be charismatic, but I’m not.  I hoped that the Lutheran preacher would not hold it against me.   He did let me speak in his big, cathedral-like church.

After we left the Lutheran’s office that day, I asked my German brother, “Bruder Richard, are you really a charismatic Christian?  You don’t act like one.  I’ve never heard you speak in tongues?”

He answered that he did indeed speak in tongues, but he did it silently and he did not do it for a show to others.  I was indeed very glad for that.

I came to learn while a missionary in Germany, to my surprise that there were indeed many Charismatic Baptists in Europe.  In fact, most Baptist over there have some kind of ‘charismatic’ experience, at least in the beginning.  What I also came to learn is that much of this was out of their need to express a faith that had been held down too long by the spiritual coldness and impersonal nature of the established European church.  In order to break free, some kind of emotional, spiritual, and charismatic experience would often happen.   Many Baptist wouldn’t show it, but they had been, in a very charismatic way, filled with the Holy Spirit.  It was part of who they were.

If you recall, when the past head of Southern Baptist International Mission Board, Jerry Rankin was active, a controversy came up about his association with some very charismatic Baptists who often prayed with a special kind of ‘prayer’ language and may have practiced it himself.  The more traditional and fundamentalist leaders of our convention were not too happy when they realized that the now head of our mission agency had been close to such experiences.  They wanted to say, like I did when I was young, that this was not spiritual, but demonic.   They wanted to express their opposition to this ‘charismatic’ way of God being a work in the world.  Most of us would probably agree.   Any kind of discussion of the Spirit could end up being a ‘hot topic’.  (http://www.bpnews.net/bpnews.asp?id=22683).

 

THE MEANING OF SPIRIT BAPTISM

When I was pastor in this association back in the 80’s, I preached a series of revival services at Courtney Baptist.  The pastor and his wife were very nice, but there was something very interesting about their relationship.  He was the pastor of that church, but she was also a preacher, a woman preacher and a Pentecostal preacher.  Even more interesting was that she was fun and full of life—so much more than her husband, the pastor. 

I’m telling you about this because I want you to know something I came to like about her and about Pentecostalism---they don’t have God all figured out---but neither do I, nor do you.   I’m still skeptical about the charismatic and displays of emotion of some, but I have come to better understand it, and I like the fact that Pentecostals desire to be baptized, not just with water, but with the Spirit and with fire.  But what does this mean for us?  Better yet, what should it mean? 

If Luke is trying to tell us something in this text, the Baptism of the Spirit is not just what Jesus will do for us, when he comes, but we can already see, right here in this text, that this very ‘fire’ was right here, in the very, deep, meaningful, fulfilling, and affirming spiritual experience Jesus had during his own baptism.   Here, Luke moves right from talking about the coming baptism to show us how the Spirit baptizes Jesus with very personal, warm, affirming and special kind of fire.  If we would just stop, I believe a lot of spiritual confusion clear-up a little.  So let’s look one last time at our text.  Do you see what happens to Jesus when the Spirit baptizes him?  When the Spirit comes down, this is when God calls his name and calls him his “beloved child”.  

In his commentary on Mark, N.T. Wright tells of a famous movie-maker who had a huge legal conflict with his long time mentor and guide.  The younger man simply couldn’t handle criticism, and ended up rejecting the person who helped him so much.  When it was all over, a close friends summed up the real problem.  ‘It was all about an ungenerous father,’ he explained, ‘ and a son looking for affirmation and love.’   Wright goes on to comment, ‘It happens all the time, in families, buisinesses, all over.   Many children grow up in our world who have never had a father say to them (either in words, in looks, or in hugs), ‘You are my dear child’, let alone, ‘I’m pleased with you.”  In the Western world, even those fathers who think this is in their hearts are often too tongue-tied or embarrassed to tell their children how delighted they are with them.  Many, alas, go by the completely opposite direction route: angry voices, bitter rejection, the slamming of doors”  (From N.T. Wright’s Mark for Everyone, WJK, 2004, p. 4).

Why does this lack of blessing have to happen in our world, when the God of all gods, the Lord of all lords, and the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ has said to us at our own baptism: “You are my dear, precious child.  I’m delighted in you!”   The whole gospel can be summed up in this one truth.   Say it to yourself slowly, over and over.   When you finally get it into your heart, you too will be baptized with the Holy Spirit.  God knows you by name.  Can’t you hear God calling you, loving you, pleased with you?  Watch out!  When you come to realize what this means---its fire!  Fire that can fire up you heart and warm up your soul because you know that having this kind of unconditional love within us is all that matters.   Amen.

A Sight For Sore Eyes

A sermon based upon Luke 2: 22-39

Dr. Charles J. Tomlin, DMin

Flat Rock-Zion Baptist Partnership

For Epiphany, January 6, 2013

What do you hope to see happen in this New Year?  

Do you want to see the economy improve?  Do you want to see your child graduate?  Do you want to see someone get married, get a job, or have a baby?  Do you want to see this church grow?  Do you want to see people draw closer to God and new people come to Christ?  What do you expect to see happen in this New Year?  Our text today promises us one thing:  We will not see it, if we don’t look for it!  What happens in life is not a “closed” system of already determined fate, which says, “What will happen, must happen”.   But “what might happen” will not happen unless we want it to happen, expect it to happen, or desire it to happen.    Let me explain.

As the gospel of Luke begins to tell the good news of Jesus, it reminds us that the truth of how things really are is not always apparent to everyone.    As far back as Isaiah, the Word of God questioned the human vision of things, saying “Behold I am doing a new thing; Do you not perceive it?” (43:13).   God was at work doing something new, but people were still expecting the same old thing.  People even pigeon-holed God.  The did not really believe God was free to do things differently, nor did they believe they could do things differently.  The end result: everything remained the same. 

In today’s text, it took an old fellow, an old aged devout gentleman named Simon, to see something different was about to happen.   These were some ‘new’ things about to happen through Jesus, which even Jesus parents couldn’t see yet.    I think there is something about Simon’s very ‘old eyes’ see that see clearly what God wants us all to see.   Isn’t that the way it often happens, you just start seeing things clearly and then you’re too old to see anymore.   You just start figuring out how to make a living, or how to live, and then, suddenly, your body is too old to go any more.   Don’t you just hate it when that happens?   Sometimes life seems to happen in reverse.   Or are we getting ready for something more?  Do you ever wonder?  What is it that God wants us to see, to know, to understand in this life? 

In our text the “consolation of Israel” is what Simon and Anna have been waiting for, but poor o’ Simon and Anna are on the way out.  But wait a moment.  Simon has just one more thing to say.  He’s been waiting to see this his whole life.   ?  Are we ready to see what Simon saw?  Simon has been praying that God would give him just one more year and one more chance to see God’s Answer for the problems of his world before his eyes are closed in death.   Now, as Simon sees Jesus,  Israel’s Messiah for the first and last time, this baby is, as the adage says, is a “sight for sore eyes”.   

Another ‘oldie goldie’ nearby, is an aged woman with the name of Anna, she sees the child Jesus in a very similar way.  Now, watch out.   Anna is a woman preacher.   Women preachers see things differently than men preachers.   They can give us insights from some very different angles and perspectives.  This woman preacher is 84 and she’s too has been waiting all her life to preach one last sermon.  Our text tells us how she goes out and preaches about this baby to everyone and all who are looking for the redemption of Jerusalem---for the hope of the future to become the reality of the present.  

But here we need to make a special note about Anna’s preaching.  Preacher Anna only preached her message to those who were looking; wanting and expecting for to God do something.    Those who don’t want to see, don’t want to understand, don’t want to hope or don’t will to believe, dare not apply, listen, learn or look to see what they see.    The target audience of her preaching “those who were looking for the redemption of Jerusalem” (vs. 38),  makes me wonder whether or not people in our own cynical and skeptical age can see still see what they saw or hope what they hoped.     Simon and Anna’s own faithful expectation of God’s fulfillment  should make us question our own view of the how the future might turn out.  Can we, with the help of these two, aged, wise, biblical characters, learn to expect what God can do next in our own time and in our own world?  Can we see God’s message of hope coming just around the corner, sooner rather than later, being fulfilled in God’s time rather being forgotten in our own time?  My question today is simply this: How should we see and hope for the future in a time when the future doesn’t look so optimistic?  Can we see own  ‘sight for ‘sore eyes” that is still can happen?   Can we, metaphorically and physically speaking, hold our eyes open just long enough for one more look into what God can do with us yet?

I have never been blind, yet, but I’ve observed a few people who are.  People who can’t see with their eyes often compensate with other senses and faculties.  They are able to develop an amazing sense of hearing, a keen sense of direction, a special sense of touch, of taste or of smell, and often a focused state of mind.  You’ve see that happen, haven’t you?  The eyesight goes dim, but the mind becomes sharper.  I watched on TV the story of a blind man who traveled all over his neighborhood with his cane.  I’ve meet a few people like that walking alone on the street and never missing a beat.   Once I watch and listen to a blind preacher who memorized the entire wedding ceremony and performed it perfectly.  And we’ve all heard Stevie Wonder and Ray Charles play and sing with Rhythms and sounds no one else could ever sing or play.  Google has even developed an especially programed GPS car that the blind can drive around town.   It’s amazing what you can see, when you really want to see.    It all makes me wonder even more about how and what Simon and Anna saw in Jesus before anyone else could?  How did they do that?  How can we? 

There were, no doubt, a lot of other people living in Jerusalem on that day when Jesus was brought to the temple.  But the only ones who saw him, as we can note, were only the ones who were faithfully waiting, looking, still hoping and expecting to see God fulfill his promise.    Do we want to see hope happen?  No matter how old or how young, are we content to settle for how things are, or can we still see hope on the way?  Are our eyes looking straight into the path what is still coming, or have our eyes already become too tired, too lazy or too sore to look up any more?    

Sometimes we have to train our eyes to see, what we can’t see, don’t we?  And it is possible, isn’t it?  Remember those 2 D photographs that were popular a few years ago?  You could stare at them and if you looked at them correctly, if you trained you eye to see, they were turned into 3 D images.  But again, you had to develop the eyes to see.  It did not come easily, or at least it didn’t come easily for me.  You had to have patience, and you had to make your eyes want to see.   If you didn’t, you ended up seeing only what was easy to see, the scrambled 2 D image.   This illustrates well what I want to say about having faith, hope and love when the prospect doesn’t look faithful, hopeful or loving.  There are some things in life you can’t see, have, or believe in, unless you really want to.   Many things pass by the untrained, unwilling, impatient eye, or overly critical eye.  But the trained eye, and the believing heart can not only see “new” and different things, it can almost be haunted by everything it sees as possible and hopeful.   Haven’t you also been around people who could see things you couldn’t?

I used to watch my father-in-law, while we sat around in a room.  He was a skilled carpenter.  While in conversation, his eye would often wander and you could see him checking out the shape of a line or sizing up the line of a wall.  He was both gifted and trained so that his eye could see what most of us never notice.  He could see what was square, what was plumb and what wasn’t.  He could see even when he didn’t try to see it.  It became automatic.  It became not just what he saw, but part of who he was.  You could even say that it was not just a matter of seeing, but it was a matter of being.  He could not do his job, live his life, or make his living, without the ability to see what others couldn’t.   I guess, if we wanted, we could all train our eyes to see a lot of new things like that.   We humans have the capacity to train ourselves to see what we want to see, what we need to see, and what we might still see, if we really try. 

We are told exactly what trained Simon’s and Anna’s eyes.  It was the Holy Spirit.  Now don’t get too nervous about what I’m going to say about the Holy Spirit.   I recently heard that a certain Lutheran church in a nearby city fired their preacher for just mentioning the Holy the Spirit in a sermon.   Don’t get the wrong idea.  I’m not talking about seeing ghosts or seeing strange things happening or hearing things go “bump” in the night.   People are superstitious by nature, but I don’t want to appeal to superstitions.    By talking about the work of the Holy Spirit, I’m talking about how God’s Spirit is at work in us, around us, through us, even outside of us, to bring about a more hopeful , caring, and loving reality in our lives and in the world.  The same kind of “hopeful” things Simon and Anna saw, I believe we can still see, if we want to see them.   But it will take some well-trained, well-focused, and well-matured eyes to see these hopeful things, especially when everything looks bad around you right now.   Do you want to see what they saw?

TO SEE RIGHTLY WE MUST LIVE RIGHTLY ---THEN THE SPIRIT WILL REST UPON US

First we are given the insight that Simon was righteous and devout, so that the Holy Spirit rested on him.   We also read about Anna, that she ‘devoted’  so that she ‘worshipped’ in the temple and ‘prayed day and night’.  Here we already see something about how to train ourselves to have hope.   You can only see what you are preparing yourself to see.   What Simon did with his life, and what Anna was doing with hers, is that they were living as if they really wanted God’s work to be fulfilled in their world.  Their witness to faith is a witness of their faith---at work, real, being practice in their own lives---their whole lives.  

Isn’t the same true for us?   Especially when it comes to spiritual matters, to seeing what can’t yet be seen, you don’t see what you don’t want to see.  You will not see anything, until you put your whole life into it.   When I studied psychology in college, we came to a very interesting subject of Hypnosis.  I was captivated by the idea that you could put a person into a trance and get them to do things while they were unconscious and asleep.   Under Hypnosis, something that was blocking a person’s healing in their unconscious mind, could be moved.  Sometimes a person who could not overcome an addiction could be retrained while asleep.  Sometimes a person who could not move an arm or leg, for no physical reason, but for an emotional one, could learn to move that part of their body while in a trance.  It was kind of like “mind over matter” instructions.   Sometimes, you could even train a mind that was afraid, not to be afraid anymore.  When the person would wake up, they would lose their fear.   But Hypnosis doesn’t work on everybody.   That’s why I used the word: “Sometimes”.   You have to want to be hypnotized in order to be hypnotized.   It does not always work, nor does the person always respond to the therapy.   One very important thing I learned about hypnosis, was that you could never make a hypnotized person, who was in a trance, wake up to do something they would not do normally do.   For example, you could not tell them to shot someone, and they would do it, if it was against their belief or values.   The only things you could get them to do, were they things they wanted to do, but could only do, when you helped them release their mind to do it (I often wondered who tested this theory).

Whether you think hypnosis works or not, for me the theory is very similar to what it means to say that because Simon was devout and righteous that the Holy Spirit rested on him.   It does not mean that Simon was able to hear things he didn’t normally hear, nor that Simon was special, unique or strange.  What this text means is that when Simon was righteous, he wanted what God wanted and he was devoted to what God desired for the world.   When you want what God wants, new things happen.   As, William Temple used to say, “When I pray coincidence happen, but when I don’t pray coincidences don’t happen.”   I don’t think Temple believed that pray works by coincidence, but I don’t believe he intended to help us realize, if we don’t pray, things most often don’t change.   We must wish them, want them, desire them, and this must not just be a matter of our heart, but it must be a matter of how we live our live.  God loves to do a new thing, the Scripture clearly says.   The Spirit blows where it will.  The Spirit rests on people who are open to him.  But before the Spirit abides on us or in us, we must first want what the Spirit wants.  We must be what God wants us to be.   New hope and new help begins with our openness to God’s Spirit which is prepared for by living our lives in the right direction and way.    So let me ask you, how will you open yourself to God’s new work of the Spirit by living your life in the best and right way in this New Year?   What is that ‘right way’?  I’m glad you asked.

TO LIVE RIGHTLY WE MUST LISTEN TO GOD’S SPIRIT—THE SPIRIT REVEALS WHAT WE NEED TO SEE, KNOW AND DO

We are also told in this text that it had been ‘revealed to him by the Spirit that Simon would not see death until he saw the Lord’s Messiah.    We are also told that Anna was a ‘prophet’—a person who listens for the voice of God before they speak for the voice of God.     This was how it was with them, but how does the Spirit “reveal” truth to us?    

This brings us to beyond the “want to” to the “how to” of knowing spiritual things.  The point here is that not only do we have to want the spirit to rest on us as we give our lives fully and freely to God, but we also have to train ourselves to be able to hear what the Spirit is truly saying, both to us and in the world.   Can you even learn to do this?   Well, Simon did.  He was not a preacher like Anna was, but he was able to gain the Spirit’s revelation of truth.  So if Simon can do, I believe anyone can get their heart in tune with the will and work of God.  I can.  You can.  For the Spirit of God is always revealing and speaking in this world, but we are not all tuned in to understand it. 

This ability to listen to the Spirit is something like that old school question about the sound of the tree falling in the forest.  If the tree falls, and no one is there to hear it, does the tree still make a sound?  I finally figured out that the right answer is that it depends on how you define the word ‘sound.’   If you only define sound as something making a noise, then it the tree did make a sound.   But if you define a sound as someone hearing the noise, then the tree didn’t make a sound because no one heard it.   The work of the Spirit can be understood just as simple as that.  What we all know is there are all kinds of noise, sounds, and clatter in this world, but it’s not all really saying anything; at least nothing important.   In order to hear what needs to be heard we need to change channels.   Sometimes we need to open ourselves up to deeper understandings of truth.   Likewise, if we want to see God at work, we too must train ourselves to see, understand and know what this means.  We must also train ourselves to hear and see what most people don’t see, but what the Spirit is actually saying and revealing to us and to the world.  

One thing that I’ve been noticing lately is the upswing of reports of NDE, or Near Death Experiences in the news media.   Have you noticed it?  First there was a child, then a woman doctor; both who wrote books.  But then, the latest of these came from a Neurosurgeon who said that he knows that his brain had no activity, yet after he woke up, he knows that he visited a place of peace where an unknown sister (he was adopted), escorted him around through a place that was filled with the most pleasant sights illuminated by a most amazing, unexplainable light.   Now, after that experience, this doctor, who is now laughed at by most of his peers, has totally changed his life.  He prays.  He goes to church.  He spends time with his family.   His life is more than his job.  His attitude about everything in life and death is different.  It is as if his life has been charged and changed by a life-giving vision and by a life-giving Spirit.  

I personally have a lot of reservations about such claims, but so did this doctor until he had the experience himself.  For him it was real.  It was unexplainable, but it is proven true and real, not by explanation, but by how he has, in fact, changed his life through what was revealed to him or to her.   Again, I can’t say whether this experience was a physical one or a work of the Spirit, but I can say that the spiritual isn’t any less than the physical we now know.  If anything, the spiritual is even more.   This doctor and others today, are being awakened to the matters of the spirit and the limits of human life, which many have been paying very little attention to.   Seeing the limits of human life or human logic can do that kind of thing to you.  It can make you want to understand, to know, or to hear more.   Are we getting older?  Are people paying more attention?  Why are people having these revelations, these NDE, and these very spiritual experiences of mind beyond body?  What enables them to know what others don’t yet know? 

Another interesting question of human limit, also, strangely enough can help us to see more potential and possibilities for life.   Have you ever noticed your own limits in life and been amazed at what someone else knows or can do?  Have you see how some people are ‘gifted’ to have knowledge or talents no one else has?  In news spot on a TV news program, they told about several young prodigies who were playing the piano or violin as good as Mozart, Bach, or Beethoven.   One child, read music and at age 3, an entire year before Mozart did.  He also played the piano at age 4, an entire year before Mozart did, and by the time this child was 7, he wrote an entire Orchestra piece, at age 7, again, an entire year before Mozart did.  How did this child do this?  Was there something exceptional about their mind---about their training and environment---or was it a gift from God---or were they a freak of nature?   Maybe it was not one, but all of the above.  Spiritual things that have not happened in many years can happen again.   There are still things that can happen that cannot be explained any other way than a ‘gift’ of the God.   Are we, in these days of realizing our own human limits, about to enter a completely new day and a new age, as religious scholar from Harvard has named as,  the age of the Spirit?   The point being, that only when we realize our human limits, can we train ourselves to see what God has for us to understand and see.

I can’t say exactly what it means to know that the Spirit reveals something to you or me, but I can tell you what the Spirit does, what the Spirit is always doing, and I can tell you what it looks like when it happens.  I can tell you this because we have been told in Scripture what the Holy Spirit reveals and does.  We may not always know where the Spirit is blowing (John 3.8), Jesus told Nicodemus, but we can know and witness to what we have seen (John 3:11) and should be able to see when the true Spirit of God is at work.   The Spirit reveals truth.  The Spirit reveals sin.  And the Spirit reveals reason and judgment.  It is this Spirit, which is nothing less than God’s Spirit, even the Spirit that has been breathed into us, that  enables the human person to rise above their animal instincts.  It is this same the Spirit that can enable us to see beyond and rise above our current situation.   It is the Spirit that opens us up to new understandings, new revelations and new avenues of possibility and hope.   These are the kinds of things the Spirit did and still does.   We can’t know everything about where the Spirit is going, but we can know for sure where the Spirit wants us to take us and wants us to go. 

TO HEAR THE SPIRIT’S REVELATION, WE MUST BE GUIDED BY THE SPIRIT---WE MUST LIFT UP JESUS

Where does the Spirit want to take us?  What does the Spirit want to reveal to us?   Our text tell us specifically that Simon was guided by the Spirit as he entered the temple and saw the child brought in.  If Simon had not wanted to be guided by the Spirit, it would not have happened.  If Simon had not been trained in the things of the Spirit, he would not have seen what he needed to see.   The same was true of the prophet Anna.   She wanted it.  She trained herself in it through her praying and fasting in the temple.   She was ready to speak because she too had been guided by this same Spirit.    The Spirit ‘guided’ her in the very same direction.  

So, now what did the ‘Spirit’ guide them to do, to see, and to know, which the whole world needed to know?  This is not hard to see is it?   What Simon and Anna do in these text, in their own ways, is what we too must do, if we want to be guided by the right Spirit in this new year.    Do you see especially how a great truth was made into a very teachable, trainable, graphic and very specific image for us when Simon took up the child up into his arms and start praising God!    Anna did the same, even in a more spiritual sense, as she began to “speak about the child”, not just praising him for herself, but speaking about the child to any who wanted to see ‘the redemption of Jerusalem’.   

Perhaps in the witness of these two worshippers we can see what will enable us to be guided by the Spirit which can lead us to find new hope and promise in this New Year ahead:  Lift up the child!   Lift Jesus up in both word and deed.  You can’t be guided by the Spirit until you identify the Spirit.  You can’t identify the Spirit until you are familiar with what the Spirit does.   And the Bible tells us that Spirit does only one true thing:  He does not speak about himself, but the Spirit reveals the truth about Jesus.    The truth was fully revealed in the life of both Simon and Anna, when they physically and spiritually began to lift up, magnify and glorify, the presence of Jesus Christ in their lives and their world.  Isn’t  this what Christian worship is about?  And isn’t it the true worship of Jesus that can bring us the hope and promise we need in our world and in our own lives?  

Near the close of last year, I came across a website that I’m going to visit a lot in the next year.   It’s a website that can bring a lot of hope to this world.   It will challenge you, and I mean really challenge you.  It will make you think and it might even make some of you mad.   The idea of this web site goes back to what most of us are already familiar with---red letter Bibles.  I don’t use one anymore, because it can be hard to read from the pulpit.  But a red-letter edition of the Bible is a Bible where the words of Jesus are printed in red ink.   What this new website, by Tony Campolo and Shane Claiborne challenge us to do, is to take and try to live these words of Jesus, as if they actually are the way we are supposed to live and behave.   Now, again, let me warn you.  This website challenges you and I to be red-letter Christians who join a red letter revolution that can bring real hope to our world.  Listen to the Manifesto, as it is printed:

“Many Bibles have the words of Jesus written in red to set them apart. Many traditions rise and stand every time the Gospels are read. It’s not to say that the other words in the Bible don’t matter. In fact it’s just the opposite – Jesus did not come to abolish the Old Testament, but to complete it.  Jesus is the fulfillment of everything God is doing in the world, the climax of the Bible, the pinnacle of history. He came to show the world what God is like with skin on, in a way we can emulate and follow.    Jesus is the lens through which we understand the Bible… and through which we understand the world we live in. As you read the words of Jesus, you get the deep sense that he did not just come to prepare us to die but to teach us how to live.

Sadly, Christians have not always followed Jesus very well.   It’s startling to think of how easily we forgotten the real Christ of our Christianity.  Often we have worshipped Jesus without doing the things he said. Sometimes we’ve even become known for the very hypocrisy and arrogance for which Jesus scolded the religious elite of his time, and we have not always been known for the love and grace that magnetized the marginalized to Christ…

But there is a new and beautiful movement stirring around the world. It is a movement of folks, young and old, who want a Christianity that looks like Jesus again. It is a movement convinced that Jesus did not just come to prepare us to die, but to teach us how to live. For us, being a Christian has as much to do with life before death as life after death. It is a movement that refuses to use our faith as a ticket into heaven and a license to ignore the hells around us. It is a movement that is committed to building the world Jesus dreamed of – a world free of violence and poverty, a world where the last are first and the first are last, where the poor are blessed and the peacemakers are the children of God. It is a movement that believes in resurrection and lives in light of the promise that life conquers death and love triumphs over hatred. It is a movement of people who are reading the Gospels with fresh eyes and saying, “What if Jesus really meant the stuff he said?”   http://redletterchristians.org/redletterrevolutionbook/manifesto/index.html.

We all know that true worship is not just coming to church, setting on a pew, singing a song or saying a prayer.  But true spiritual worship, said the apostle Paul is to “make your body a living sacrifice, which is your spiritual worship” (Romans 12: 1-2, NRSV).   To lift up Jesus, you must put your whole life on the line.  This is what being a ‘red-letter’ Christian means.   Real hope does not come with half-way commitment to the truth.  Hope only comes when we live rightly, listen to God’s spirit, and when we are guided by the same Spirit we allow to take control of our own lives.

So, my most important message of the whole year all comes down to your answer on this first Sunday:  How will you lift up Jesus with your life in this New Year?  How will you do right?  How will you listen with your whole heart?  How will you make yourself available to go where the Spirit leads and do what the Spirit says?   How will you not just be hopeful, but how will you bring hope into this world by the faithfulness of your own life?   This is just how close real hope is to any and all of us; it is as close as the very next right, good, and necessary thing we will do to lift up Jesus for the glory of God who is always able to do a new thing.  Amen.

Jesus Is Worth the Wait

A sermon based upon Luke 2: 1-14

Dr. Charles J. Tomlin, DMin

Flat Rock-Zion Baptist Partnership

For Christmas Eve, December 24, 2012

"Glory to God in the highest heaven, and on earth peace among those whom he favors!" 

(Luke 2:14 NRS)

There is an unforgettable story about Major Harold Kushner and a marine who was held by the Viet Cong for five and a half years.  Among the prisoners in Kushner’s POW camp was a tough young marine, 24 years old, who had already survived two years of prison-camp life in relatively good health. Part of the reason for this was that the camp commander had promised to release the man if he cooperated. Since this had been done before with others, the marine turned into a model POW and the leader of the camp’s thought-reform group.

As time passed he gradually realized that his captors lied to him. When the full realization of this took hold he became a zombie. He refused to do all work and rejected all offers of food and encouragement.  He only lay around on his cot sucking his thumb.  In a matter of weeks he was dead. Why?  Could it be that when this marine realized that his captors had lied to him, that he lost all hope? Hope is powerful. “Hope sees the invisible, feels the intangible, and achieves the impossible.”  I once heard that a dying person can live on one spoonful of water a day.  Even holding on to a little hope can keep us our spirits alive in much the same way.

The great prophet Isaiah gave a powerful presentation of hope, in Isaiah 9:6, naming the Messiah who was to come as the “Wonderful Counselor, the Mighty God, the Everlasting Father, and the Prince of Peace.”   But between Isaiah’s hope until the birth of Jesus was more than 700 years.  Even the Bible went silent for over 400 years of those years.   The voice of God went silent for a long, long time, but it wasn’t permanent.

By the time we get Luke’s account of Jesus’ birth, people were still wondering when the time would be fulfilled.   Right after the angel’s announcement of Jesus’ birth to the Shepherds keeping watch over their flock by night, we find an old man named Simon, still hoping to see the fulfillment of Israel’s long awaited hope before he dies.   Upon seeing Jesus and holding him in his arms, he rejoiced and praised God, saying these unforgettable words that even shocked Mary and Joseph:  "Master, now you are dismissing your servant in peace, according to your word;  for my eyes have seen your salvation,  which you have prepared in the presence of all peoples, a light for revelation to the Gentiles and for glory to your people Israel." (Luk 2:29-32 NRS).   It was as if Simon was saying for all of us, Jesus is worth the wait! 

But we also know the difficulty most of us have with waiting, don’t we?    Christmas will be here tomorrow, but we still have one more night to wait.   Most children won’t be able to stand it much longer.  They have been waiting long enough.   Tomorrow is Christmas.  Many of them will get up before the break of dawn, without your permission or without your persuasion to see what there is to see.  The wait has been long, but tomorrow will prove that Christmas has been worth the wait.

But tonight we are still waiting.  And we are waiting not just for tomorrow, but for the truth of Christ’s rule of peace to become a reality all over the world.  We are still waiting tonight, and we will probably still be waiting tomorrow, but for now, we need to hear the joyful message of the angels who message of “good news and great joy” and their benediction of “glory to God in the highest, on peace” remind us again that Jesus is indeed the coming one who is worth the wait.   Can we still believe this heavenly pronouncement? Do we still hope for such peace to come to earth, into our lives and for our families?  Can we hope that this peace will even start with the nations and religions of the world?  Are we still willing to wait?

Last year in an interview the Dalai Lama was asked if he had hope for the future. He laughed and said, 'Of course I have hope. The future has not yet been decided.'   Do we believe this? Or do we live as if we believe there is no hope, as if the future has already been determined, as if the conflict of our lives and world are permanent.  Tonight and tomorrow, throughout the world, Christians will celebrate the birth of the Prince of Peace. Even well beyond the Christian household, men and women with their families and children will mark this day with gift-giving and celebration.  People and cultures everywhere will hear again the song of hope and will look to the child and wait, singing “Glory to God in the highest and earth peace…! 

Shepherds were the first ones to learn that the hope had come, but that they still had to wait.  Unlettered, unwashed herders of livestock existing at the margins, far from the power-centers of respectability and prestige, they were the first to hear the angel’s chorus: "Glory to God in the highest and on earth peace."  The shepherds believed what they heard.   The end of waiting did not come first to the power places and power holders of the world.  The message of hope emerged among the least significant, among shepherds, among those who could never have imagined.   They were the first to envision the end of all waiting---but they too still had to wait.  They had to wait on the child to grow, on the teacher to appear, on the cross to take his life, and upon the resurrection message to spread the word into the world.   They heard the angels, but they still had to wait.

Aren’t many of us are still waiting,  while we too “keep watch” in the 'fields' of our nations, in places very distant from all the noise of Washington, and the many other places of power and prestige?   How do we still think about the child, still contemplate the message, and wait on his rule of peace?   The song of angelic hope has long been sung, but it is still repeated every year at Christmas or felt every time a child is born.   We are still waiting on peace and on hope.   Can we still hope?  Do we still believe?  Is it still worth the wait?

In Matthew’s gospel, it is not the shepherds, but it is wise men who are wandering in the desert waiting to find the trail of a new star which has appeared.  These are not insiders, like Mary, Joseph, Simon or the Shepherds, but they are “outsiders”, travelers, migrants, or internationals, who have come from others cultures, other religions, and other places, looking and waiting for the same thing we all need---hope and peace.   Can you realize that tonight, we are not the only ones waiting, praying, hoping and believing?  Can we understand that we live in a world where people are more alike than different?  Can we understand that the core of what we are all waiting for is found in the truth---even the truth about Jesus Christ?  We don’t all have to be Christians to understand the truth that is in this child is the same truth we all need, want, and await.  We want God and we want peace.

In his book, “Why Jesus, Moses, Buddha and Mohammed crossed the Road”, Brian McLaren makes this point.  As a Christian writer, he was recently having a meeting with a bunch of Rabbi who were reading one of his books and asked him to speak.  Since his book was about the Christian Faith, he wanted to know what they thought about Jesus.  The answer the Rabbis gave was:  “Oh they know that Jesus was a faithful Jew, a true, but rejected prophet, the Son of God, and everything the New Testament said he was.”  “But,” they continued, “don’t expect us to jump up and down to become Christians and join your church.  Do you know how many thousands years Christians have bullied and persecuted us?   We can’t easily become one with you when we’ve been so mistreated like by some like you.  We just aren’t there, yet.   You’ll just have to wait!

So what do we do, while we are still waiting?  What are we to do when we are waiting to for others to understand Jesus and when others are waiting for us, the church, to understand Jesus?  If we are honest, we in the church don’t always get Jesus right either, do we?   Like Philip Gulley, a Quaker writer puts it on the title of one of recent books: “If the Church Where Christian” implying exactly why some people still have not become Christian, because so many us still are not.  It has nothing to do with Jesus, but it has everything to do with how unlike Jesus some of his followers still can be. If we are waiting on the world and the world is waiting on us, we could be in for a long, long wait!   Is Jesus really worth the wait?

So let’s get back to those Wise Men who came looking for Jesus.  Interestingly, the shepherds and wise men never appear again in Gospel accounts.  Maybe they never heard the rest of the story. Maybe they never became Christians. Becoming a Christian is not the only point of the Christmas story.  Surprisingly, everyone does not have to become a Christian for the peace of Christmas to come to the earth.   Even Jesus wasn’t a Christian, was he?  If you want to get technical about it, the followers of Jesus weren’t called “Christians” until Jesus’ followers moved out of Jerusalem and into Antioch.  The believing Thief on the Cross wasn’t a Christian either.  Everyone does not have to become ‘Christian’ or a ‘Church person’ to discover the hope of the earth, but everyone does have to come to love, follow and wait on the Christ.  If there will ever be peace on this earth, we all have to wait for Jesus.

Do you see what the wise men did while they were waiting in the in-between time between curiosity, adoration and saving faith?  They brought their best gifts.  That’s not a bad thing to do while you wait, is it?   Bring your best gifts to God and wait and see what God does next.  If people of the world learn this---just to bring their best gifts and wait on God, the peace would come sooner, than later, wouldn’t it?  But we don’t always give God our best.  Too often we become impatient and we give God our worst.  Who knows what they really knew of God, of Christ or whatever religion they had, but they did know how to give their best.

They gave to the child the greatest gifts: gifts of gold--- a costly gift of preciousness----a gift of frankincense---the blessed perfume of sacredness----and they also brought the healing ointment of myrrh---pointing to the healing and help we all need from God.  

Interestingly, when we think about these gifts of preciousness, sacredness, healing, these are the same gifts the magi are looking and waiting for.  And what they were waiting for is also what they brought to the child.   In this way, I guess you could say that the Christmas miracle of giving is kind of like the miracle of the Loaves and Two Fishes.  You give God the best you’ve got, the best you understand, the best you have to give, and then you wait and see what God does next.   Maybe this is exactly why Christmas keeps coming back year after year, so that we can learn what it all means and what we truly have to give.   The wisest people know that God can’t give anything to us until we give our best to him.  The seeds of hope for peace in the world have already been put into our human hands.   When we put to practice of what it means to be faithful to God and to others, we will not have much, if any longer, to wait.  The greatest gifts are in our hands.

But tonight we still wait.  Tonight, we are asked to bring to the child our best gifts and we are to wait for others and with others until they do the same.  This great hope we wait for is not out there, but the great hope for peace in the world is already here, waiting for us to open our hands and to bow down.  He waiting on us to give the best that we can give.  Will we give the gifts of the preciousness of life, of sacredness of God, and the gifts of healing we all need?  The greatest hope of the world is still waiting on us, not just on Jesus, on God, or some other Wise Men, but for the Christmas peace to break loose in this world could be waiting on us.

Let me close with a story about a preacher’s father.  John Phillip Newell’s Father had a dream of peace in his heart that he was waiting to come into the world.   His father was born off the Shankhill Road in Belfast, Northern Ireland, the most militant of Protestant communities.  He was born in 1922, the same month as the Irish Civil War began.  He breathed in the infection of soul that tore apart the life of a whole nation. He knew within himself the hatred that divided North from South, Protestant from Catholic, Christian from Christian.

But in his mid-eighties, John Newell’s father wanted his son to take him to the south of Ireland. He had never been before as an adult.   The son arranged a family holiday in County Kerry and on the first Sunday John took him into Dingle Town, naively thinking there might be a variety of churches to choose from.  They could find only one, St Mary's.    It was Catholic, but they were Protestant.   So there they were standing outside a Roman Catholic church, and the son was feeling slightly sorry for his father. "You know, we don't have to go in there," the son said to the father.  To which the Father responded, "I want to go to church and I want to go in there." Yet still unsure, the son said, "And we don't have to stay for the whole service!" To which he replied, "I want to go to church and I want to stay for the whole service."

The priest on duty that day was a delightful Irish man, whose warm style was endearing. When it came to the intercessions, he said, "Now we pray for the weather, Lord. It's not been too bad but it could be much better. And we have people visiting from all over the world, Lord, and we'd like them to see our beautiful country, so we pray for the weather, Lord." And on and on he went.

When it came to the distribution of the mass, there was that Belfast-born Protestant father with tears streaming down his face going forward to receive the bread and the wine from a Roman Catholic priest from the south of Ireland.   When you give the best gift---even the gifts of tears for the peace of the world, there is always hope.   As long as we can feel for each other, and feel pain for the world, we know that it will all be worth the wait. (From John Philip Newell's sermon, “Look to the Child”, www.dayone.org).

What in this world could not be reconciled, if we would bring Christ our best gifts and learn to wait---to wait for God and to wait with each other?   As we wait we give to God and to each other those gifts we consider most precious, most sacred and most healing.   If we will give our best, God will do the rest.  The in these kinds of gifts is the power of love---and we all know, that true love knows how to wait.

Will we bring to Christ our greatest gifts, we carry within ourselves---the precious gift of life, the sacred gift of Holy God, and the healing salve of love?   If we will bring such gifts as these, I believe, I know, I guarantee, that we won’t have much longer to wait.   So for now, we rejoice in what we have to give to each other this night:  "Glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace!"  Amen.

Song Slightly Out of Tune

A Sermon Based Upon Luke 1: 39-56

By Rev. Dr. Charles J. Tomlin, DMin

Flat Rock-Zion Baptist Partnership

Fourth Sunday of Advent, December 23, 2012

“And blessed is she who believed that there would be a fulfillment of what was spoken to her by the Lord." (Luke 1:45 NRS).

Hope sings!   As poet Emily Dickerson once wrote: “Hope is the thing with feathers that perches in the soul and sings the tune without the words and never stops at all.”   The music of hope is central to all our lives.  The music of hope can lift us beyond what we know and give us the promise of something more.   Music is a  gift of song which can make us want to believe in what might, can or will be. 

When you become a Christian in the European Church, at your baptism you are not only presented a Bible but you are also presented a song book. Your first Christian class as a newly baptized believer is often music lessons.  Music and the Word go together like hand and glove to bring faith, hope and love into our lives.   You just can’t imagine a Christian who doesn’t at least try to sing and make a joyful noise.  

And what would our lives be without the sound of music?  What would our faith be without the music of the soul?  What would Christmas be without the singing of carols and the music of hope?  Even for fun we must sing our way through this time of year: Jingle Bells.  Jingle Bells.  Jingle all the way.  Oh what fun to laugh and SING sleighing song tonight!  Here in the south we seldom sled at Christmas, but we always sing.

But Christmas music is much more musical jingles.  Christmas music must be sung with depth and meaning for Christmas to truly seem like Christmas.   These kinds of Christmas songs don’t rise and fall on the charts, but they are a different kind of music; the kind we sing over and over each year.  It’s not music that fits the times, but its music that makes the times and brings us the faith, hope and love of the season. 

We all have our favorite songs at Christmas.  For instance, “O Come, O Come Emmanuel,” is not a much beloved Christmas carol, because it sounds are minor and solemn.  “Silent Night” is much loved, but even it can drag on slowly.  “Joy to the World” sounds exciting and joyful.   “Angels We Have Heard On High” is wonderfully joyous, but it can be quite challenging with its chorus: “Gloria in Excelsis Deo”.  All these great Christmas songs are solid and enduring, but it might surprise you that one of the greatest Christmas songs must be sung slightly out of tune.

None of us like to hear music “out of tune”.   We will accept discord and dissonance from in the innocent voices of our children, but how could we love a Christmas song that is always sung out of tune.  But in a figurative way, that is exactly what we find in Mary’s song, which is our text for today.   Some have put her song to music, but it hasn’t become very popular.  It is too classical, too religious, too boring, or too sophisticated for popular consumption.  But of course, that it’s not at all ‘consumable” may be good thing.   What’s isn’t “consumed” can last, right?    This may be why Mary’s song has to be sung “out of tune” for our time, as much as it was Mary first sung it.

This ‘slightly’ out-of-tune” song has been called Mary’s Magnificat---taken from the first word for “magnify” as it begins in the Latin text.  Mary’s song is not the only Christmas tune in the Bible.  Luke’s gospel includes three others: The Exultation by Elizabeth, The Benedictus of Zechariah, and of course, the angels’ “Glory to God in the Highest!”  But before we get to the “glory in the highest” we have to hear and learn to sing this music of a God who is out of tune and out of step with how things are in the world. 

LET YOUR SOUL MAGNIFY THE LORD

The very first note ‘out of tune’ with our world was Mary’s own faith.  In a world of faithlessness, agnosticism, self-centeredness and cynicism, Mary was courageously faithful.  Against all that was wrong in the world, Mary did something right.  Even in a world that played to an entirely different melody, Mary marched to the beat of a different drum.  She lived the courageous, honorable, and radical life of faith in Israel’s God.

We are told in Luke’s text that out of all the women in Israel who could have been chosen to bear the baby who would be the Messiah, Mary was chosen because she was ‘the favored one’.   This does not mean that Mary was better than anyone else, nor does it mean that Mary was more important, but what it does mean is that Mary lived her life in the most normal, honorable, decent way that allowed God to use her for this very special miracle of grace.   What was it that God found so “favorable” with Mary?   Was it her youth, her virginity, her faithfulness to Israel’s law?   Perhaps this was part of it.   But what is most clearly revealed is found in very first line of her song when she starts: “Let my soul magnify the Lord!”   By this Mary means, Let my life and my soul put the focus straight on what God wants—not just on what I want. 

This wish to exalt and magnify the LORD is a wish still much out of tune with the world.  It has always been that way.   Most people march to the beat of their own music.  Most people live to amplify their own feelings and their own ideas.   But Mary’s song is different.  Mary’s song is about how her life can amplify, magnify, intensify or augment the sentiments and wishes of God for this world.  That is certainly not what most music amps pick up today, is it?  Most live to make their own music or to mimic world’s music, don’t they?   A life lived for the will of God gets very little attention, or is to be despised or belittled.  But despite the fact that in so many ways Mary was unremarkable in her life, she was exceptional in her faith.  There was ‘something about Mary’ which still makes her a woman out of tune with this world.  Strangely enough, it was this very peculiar quality of personal faith that made possible the birth of the Messiah.  It can be assumed that without the capacity for the Christ to be born in her heart, Jesus would never have been conceived in Mary’s womb.

When you think about it, Mary’s faith was counter-cultural, but it was not exceptional.  In fact, it is Mary’s very ordinary life and simple faith that allowed for God’s grace to intercept her world.  Jesus was born of Mary, because Christ was born in Mary.   As the Church has rightly said, Mary is right revered as the very first ‘disciple’ of Jesus.   We need more people with faith that is ‘out of tune’ and out of step with this world.   We need people who are exceptional, exactly because they are not the ‘new normal’ and not because they are the ‘old normal’ either, but we need people who will live out the ‘radical’ and ‘revolutionary’ life that is lived above and beyond the norms and noises of this world.  There is so much in this world that needs to be confronted, changed and challenged, but it won’t happen from the top-down, it must come from the bottom-up.   It must come from people like it did from that young 26 year-old girl who works at a Target store in Illinois, who wrote an email to petition and challenge the work practices of large retailers who want to work ordinary people on holidays for their own profits.  Now, that young girl named Jennifer Ann, has the potential to be a Mary.   By her sense of sense of rightness, justice and reason, she gave birth to the kind of business sense that needs to change in our greedy, selfish, ego-centric society.

(For details story see: http://gma.yahoo.com/retail-workers--families-disgruntled-over-interrupted-thanksgiving.html).

Or also consider that young 15 year-old-Pakistani girl,  Malala Yousafzai, who was shot in the neck by the Taliban because she was speaking out and advocating the right of every young girl to have an education.  People around the world are praying for her recovery, crying out for justice against her shooters, and many are calling for her to be nominated for the Nobel Peace prize.   Why are they doing that, because this young girl was so exceptional?  No, they are doing this because this girl was so right, so true, so sincere, and so courageous.  Like Mary, she was a young, helpless girl, willing to sacrifice herself for the truth. (http://www.voanews.com/content/un-designates-malala-day-in-honor-of-pakistani-school-girl/1543221.html). We need more women, more young girls, and more people in general, who will sing this way.  We need people who will show and share their faith in the things that are true, just and right.    Mary sang this song that was ‘slightly out of tune’ and so must we.

LET THE BABY MOVE INSIDE OF YOU

Another ‘note’ about Mary’s song brings us to ask: Why is Mary singing this way?   What motivates her faith, besides this miraculous angel who brings her God’s message?   Well, of course, it must be the baby.  When a baby is coming, your life will focus on a lot of different things.  When people have children, they often settle down, become more serious, or they sing loud and clear, “God, help me!”  Mary ought to be singing this kind of song, because she is a young woman, having a child out of wedlock.  

Mary’s song may be all of this, but it is still more.  Mary is singing about God doing a miracle through her, but it’s not just a miracle for her, but it’s a miraculous work God will do for the world.  Like most mothers to be, she sees her child as unique and special, which makes her feel especially blessed.   What mother doesn’t feel this way?  What parent doesn’t see their child as some kind of “savior” from all that is meaningless and mad about the world?   Can’t a child promise to bring us all a different and better focus in life?   Mary is right about this, but again, we must realize that it’s not just her coming chance at motherhood that makes her feel this way.  When the baby jumps for joy in Elizabeth’s womb something even more special than the conception of two talented children is what is being announced.   These children are going to be born for a very special purpose---to bring hope of God’s mercy, grace, and salvation into the world. 

Can you still get excited about this?  Can you still feel the baby move inside of you?  I’m not talking about having a physical child, but now I’m talking about letting the truth of God move in us.  Is there still any life?  Is there anything left that makes you see the need for God’s truth, righteousness and justice in this world?    Let me explain more of what I’m implying.   In this child that was to be born, God is going to make music that no human voice can make alone.   In this baby, God is going to fulfill his promise, not simply a promise to bring a child to Mary, but to bring the sounds of hope to Mary’s world.    Mary is singing slightly out of tune when she sings of her hope through this child, God “has shown the strength of his arm; He has scattered the thoughts of the proud in their hearts”    This a very strange and “out of tune” way to save the world, isn’t it?   How does God show his “strength” by getting “scattering the thoughts of the proud” “bringing down thrones”,  by  “lifting up the lowly” and by ‘filling the hungry with good things, while the rich go away empty”?   Does this sound like Christmas?  What kind of Christmas spirit is this?  

All of us know and love the Victorian play “A Christmas Carol” by Charles Dickens, with its stingy and sour Ebenezer Scrooge, its ghostly and ghastly Jacob Marley and it’s underpaid and overworked Bob Crachit.  Maybe the “Grinch Who Stole Christmas” is more popular these days, but it is Charles Dickens’ story that rings much true with the world we know all too well.  What you may not know about is what inspired Dickens to write this story of hope for transformation and change.  Dickens himself grew up in some very humiliating conditions which are not directly described, but implied.   When Charles’ father was briefly imprisoned for improper business practices, this intellectually gifted young Charles Dickens had to leave school and go to work in the factory.  There he was became haunted for the rest of his life,  after witnessing firsthand the terrible working conditions of the most impoverished areas of London and saw the many social injustices the poor suffered at the expense of the wealthy and well-to-do.  Dickens was keenly touched by the lot of poor children in the middle 19th century England.    In May of 1843, he was about to publish a political pamphlet  entitled,  An Appeal to the People of England, on behalf of the Poor Man's Child" but instead, the pamphlet would become a narrative, with the title: A Christmas Carol, rather than a stuffy, polemical essay.  Dickens believed that this story of “good news” would be the best way to get his message across to the people who needed to have a Christmas conversion of their own to move away from their own greed and selfishness to become concerned, touched and burdened about the great social and spiritual need of his day.

(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Christmas_Carol).

What we can say about Dickens Carol, as well as, Mary’s song, is that they were both singing a song bigger than her own and very out of tune with how things were in the real world.   But is Mary’s song, really that much off based with how things are,  or should be today?   Mary sings that the changes that that need to happen, that should happen, or must happen, will only come when the “strong arm of the LORD scatters the proud in the thoughts of their hearts”.   Isn’t this still how the change must come?   The great needs for change, conversion and transformation, will never come fully and finally until people have a conversion of mind and heart.   Mary rightly sings that if change is going to come, God will have to bring it, and it must begin from within.  What Mary sings is out of tune with the Military options of our world.  Mary sings that the great change come not by the force of human powers, but by spiritual strength of the eternal and true God.   Peace does not come through our own human strength.  This is a message that is simply out of tune. Or is it?

LET GOD DO GREAT THINGS FOR YOU

The final thing that is much out of tune in Mary’s song is this hope that this baby, her baby will not only challenge the status quo of the world, but will also change that “same ole, same ole” world.  Mary sings that by sending this child, God will not only do “great things” for her (v. 49) but will offer “mercy for those who fear him from generation to generation” (v. 50) and God will “help his servant Israel in remembrance of his mercy” (v.54).  She believes that it is the birth of this child, who will finally fulfill God’s long standing promise of saving Israel and bringing light, salvation, and hope to whole world.

To believe that such a promise has been, or is being fulfilled, still takes as much faith for us to sing and it did for Mary.   Our faith in Jesus is still a faith much out of tune with the ways of the world.  That has not changed.  I don’t believe it will ever change until God finally intervenes to put all the wrongs of this world to right.  We still wait on that change.  We still pray, “thy Kingdom come and thy will be done”.   Much like Mary, we still sing a song of hope that is slightly out of tune, don’t we?   Is there any used to sing it?  Is there is any reason to keep believing it?   

The great teacher of preachers, Fred Craddock tells about his most difficult “convert”.  He writes: “My mother took us to church and Sunday school; my father didn’t go. He complained about Sunday dinner being later when she came home. Sometimes the preacher would call, and my father would say, "I know what the church wants. Church doesn’t care about me.  Church wants another name, another pledge, another name, and another pledge.  Right? Isn’t that the name of the game?  Another name, another pledge." That’s what he always said.

Sometimes we’d have a revival.  The pastor would bring the evangelist and say to the evangelist, "There’s one now, sic him, get him, get him," and my father would say the same thing.  Every time, my mother in the kitchen, always nervous, in fear of flaring tempers, of somebody being hurt.  And always my father said, "The church doesn’t care about me. The church wants another name and another pledge." I guess I heard it a thousand times.

One time he didn’t say it. He was in the veteran’s hospital, and he was down to 73 pounds. They’d taken out his throat, and he said, "It’s too late."  They put in a metal tube, and X-rays burned him to pieces.  The son flew in to see him. He couldn’t speak, couldn’t eat.  Around the room were potted plants and cut flowers on all the windowsills, a stack of cards twenty inches deep beside his bed.  And even that tray where they put food, if you can eat it, on that was a flower.  And all the flowers beside the bed, every card, every blossom, were from persons or groups from the church.

The Father watched his son Fred read a card.  The Father could not speak, so he took a Kleenex box and wrote on the side of it a line from Shakespeare.  If he had not written this line, I would not tell you this story. He wrote: "In this harsh world, draw your breath in pain to tell my story."

I said, "What is your story, Daddy?"  And he wrote, "I was wrong." (Fred B. Craddock, Craddock Stories, Mike Graves and Richard F. Ward, eds., Chalice Press, 2001, p. 14.). 

Who will finally be proven wrong?  I guess for now, the truth remains to be seen—not only in the world, but in us.  Whether or not Jesus is real today depends on how we want to see things.  Do we look at the world only from our own limited perspective, or do we see it as God sees it?   It’s almost funny isn’t it, and also sad, that the closer we get to God the more Jesus makes sense.  Only as we “ponder it in our hearts” like Mary did can we find and know the truth. 

Whether Jesus’ birth makes a difference in the big, bad world “out there” Mary can’t yet know and neither can we.  But what Mary does know and can know, and what always makes Christmas real, is that Jesus is making a difference in her life.  This child is not just her child, but this is God’s child.  It starts with the same miracle every mother  knows, but it doesn't stop there.  This one poor baby, born of a peasant woman, born far away from the world’s powers, should never have been noticed at all.  His story ought not to have been told because nothing about him should have ever mattered.   It shouldn’t have mattered, unless, that is, the story is true. We are still telling Jesus’ story today because a helpless child came into this hopeless world and is still the only true hope of the earth.  This is a song of faith that remains very much out of tune with our world, but its strange sound is more hopeful than any other music I know.  Amen.