a messy story for a messy world: a homily on Christmas Eve

Christmas Eve

Year A, 12/24/13

University Lutheran Church- Palo Alto, CA

            In the darkness we have stumbled.  Walking through the hallways of our lives at night we fumble, searching for a light switch or maybe a simple night light.  We run into end tables and stub our toes on doorposts.  Again, we search for any sight of light.  The darkness is messy, it’s painful, it’s lonely.  Our world is messy, it’s painful, it’s lonely.

            The Christmas story doesn’t make any sense.  It’s not rational.  It’s a story of how God comes into a world that looks suspiciously like our own world—and why would a God ever do that?!  It’s a story about a poor, pregnant and unwed teenage girl.  It’s a story about the girl’s fiancé, who is not the father—and there have been rumors, off-handed comments, and judgmental stares.  The story takes this disheveled couple on an 80 mile journey from Nazareth to Bethlehem.  The terrain is rough, emotions are tense, and the girl is 9 months pregnant.  And not only is the girl pregnant, but she’s in labor.  And there is nowhere to go.  They are outsiders and not welcome.  So the Christmas story continues in a barn.  And it smells, and the animal feed is itchy, and oh no, the girl’s fiancé just stepped in something.  Unable to escape the reality of their situation, the girl gives birth.  And as if the situation needed any more of the extraordinary, the child of whom the girl gives birth is said to be the Son of God, the savior of the world.  Really? God comes to the world in this situation?! The Christmas story just doesn’t make sense.

 Let’s recap—God comes to earth in the form of a weak, vulnerable infant, born to a poor teenage mother under some really sketchy circumstances.  That’s not what Gods are supposed to do! There were a lot of people expecting a savior in Israel at this time, but I don’t think this is what they had in mind.  The savior of the world was supposed to be an authoritative warrior king; triumphing over enemies, crushing oppressors.  Instead, this God chooses to come into the world in the most innocent of ways and unattractive of circumstances. 

The Christmas story is not sterile.  It’s messy.  It is literally messy but it also emotionally messy, politically messy.  And it is in this messy situation that God comes into the world.  The Christmas story is a story of how God comes into a messy world that looks a little too much like our own messy world.  And what kind of God would want to get involved with that?  

For my Clinical Pastoral Education, I served as the chaplain of a shelter for women escaping domestic violence and chronic homelessness.  The situations that bring women to places like these are testaments to our world’s great darkness.  I worked with women who suffered in ways that humans should never have to suffer.  I heard stories that I wish no one would ever have to tell.  While I was working at the shelter, I got to know a woman who wanted to learn more about Christianity.  In particular, this woman wanted to read the bible so every other day we would meet and read stories about Jesus and his followers.  At one point in our time together, I was trying to explain how Jesus was both God and a human-- human just like us.  I was stumbling over my words, trying to explain something that I thought just didn’t make sense, when I noticed this woman’s eyes were welling up with tears. 

She looked at me, silent tears rolling down her cheeks, and said “So, if Jesus was both human and God, then that means God must know what it’s like to be me.  God knows what it’s like to suffer, because God was a human.”  This woman, who had lived in one of the most darkest and messiness of worlds, was overcome by the light of God’s love for her.  In an instance, she got it.   She got it so completely.  God knew what she had been through. God cared enough to come to earth and experience what is like to be human: to have a messy life, and to suffer, and to cry, and live through broken relationships, and to witness darkness first hand.  This woman who had walked in darkness, saw a great light in a God who cared enough about her to come to this messy earth. 

This is what is at stake in the Christmas story, Emmanuel—God with us.  At Christmas we celebrate a God who breaks into darkness.  A God who is not separate and distanced from the world, but active, and involved.  A God who was born as a human child and walked this earth and ministered in ways both ordinary and extraordinary.  A God who loves and cares for us so much that this God chooses to come into the messiest of our lives and dares to speak of hope, even when there seems to be none.  This is the God who reveals Godself in Jesus.  This is the God to whom you belong.  This is what we are celebrating. 

No, the story doesn’t really make sense.  We can’t use rationality to explain it.  This kind of love is beyond rationality.  It’s a kind of love that seeps into our brokenness and heals what was thought was beyond repair.  It’s a kind of love that risks everything to know relationship.  It’s a kind of love that is threatening to traditional structures of power.  It’s a love worth dying for.  It doesn’t make sense but this crazy, irrational love is worth putting our hope in.   

Tonight, we do not only celebrate the birth of a child; but tonight, this Christmas Eve, we celebrate that light has come into darkness; Bringing peace, orientation, and hope for a time when no one need stumble through darkness alone.  Living into this hope, may we set rationality aside.  May we live daringly in the hope that God dwells among us.  And, as people who have walked in darkness, may we experience the liberation that comes with the arrival of long expected light. 

a new thing: a sermon about weird magi and revealing God's unexpected presence.

Epiphany, Year A

January 5, 2014, University Lutheran Church- Stanford, CA

(Isaiah 60:1-6, Ephesians 3:1-12, Matthew 2:1-12)

            Growing up, I had a very distinct vision of how the story of the magi went.  My imagined story had a lot to do with popular culture and the song “We Three Kings.”  In my mind, I would always picture three powerful looking dudes.  They were dressed really classy and even wore crowns because, of course, they were kings.  And not only were these three dudes powerful kings, but they were also smart and wise--- Like Dumbledore! And so, for a long time, when I would read their story in the Bible, I would immediately imagine three Dumbledore Kings on steroids.  If only my childhood vision would be true.  Because the story would be a whole lot less confusing if those who discovered Jesus were powerful leader-kings, and not strange, outsiders. 

            See, when the first readers of Matthew’s gospel were hearing this story, they weren’t thinking of three powerful, clean-cut kings.   In the original language, the word that gets attributed to these people is that of wise men, in Greek, magi, but the text doesn’t really give any indication that these people are wise or even men.  Their behavior seems to hint that they may actually be a bit unwise.  After all, even though they are following a bright star that leads them straight to Bethlehem, they still get lost and have to make a pit stop in Jerusalem to ask for directions, and then they spill the beans to Herod!  And the gifts that they bring to Bethlehem are not very practical and, frankly, are a little creepy.  Really, who brings myrrh, something used for embalming, to a baby shower? (They should have just gotten a Target gift card!) And these people, they’ve come to worship Jesus, a baby, whom they call “King of the Jews.”  And they’re not even Jewish—why do they even care?!

Those who were reading or hearing this story in Matthew for the first time, most likely early Jewish followers of Jesus, probably would have not have thought this group of wise-people to be very wise.  They may have even been offended; if anything, confused.  Most people hearing this story when it was first written probably wouldn’t have used the adjective “wise” but instead, might have thought “weird.”  This story isn’t about three powerful, wise kings, but instead, about a strange gaggle of weirdos. Why would God choose them to reveal the birth of Jesus?  Why them?  Why weirdos?

We don’t have to read too far into the gospels to be reminded that the Bible is full of weirdos.  This Jesus character associates with a lot of strange people.  John the Baptist—wears camel hair clothing and eats bugs; the disciples—not very good at their jobs and smell like fish, all of the people whom Jesus heals—lepers, unclean women, dead people; Weirdos.  What was God thinking?

In Jesus, God did something new.  The story of Christmas is that God did a new thing in coming to earth as a vulnerable human baby—gods shouldn’t really do that. The story of Epiphany and the magi continues the theme.  God comes to earth as a baby and then the first people to recognize the importance of this God-child, the first group to name this child as he is, is a group of non-Jewish, transient outsiders.             

That certainly wasn’t expected, because if God did what was expected in this situation than the weird magi would have actually been Jewish, Dumbledore-like, wise and power kings.  But that wouldn’t be new—That’s a story we already know.  No, God is doing something new and this is clear already, in just the second chapter of the story.  These magi, they aren’t perfect, devout followers of Judaism—far from it, they practice magic and astrology—yet, God chooses to bring them into the story.  Suddenly, the birth of Christ becomes made known for everyone, not just the most acceptable of followers.  Everyone.  Suddenly, Christ is not just for the expected but also for even the most unexpected.  Everyone.  In Christ, God is doing something new.  In Christ, God is made accessible to all people, especially the weirdos. 

            But why them?  Why all the weirdos? 

Our world is full of stories about powerful kings.  Our folklore is full of wise Dumbledores.  The stories of success in our world are so often about working hard, denying whatever you can in the process, knowing the right people, and earning what you deserve.  The stories of our world have to do with good people getting good things and bad people getting what they deserve.  Our world’s stories are rich in narratives about a shallow happiness that comes from self-justification and how weirdos are weird for a reason.

 But, if Christianity is only for the non-weirdos, the perfect, happy people who have earned their best lives than God coming to earth as a human did nothing new.  If Christianity is only about how God favors the righteous, pious, most “right” religious people then Jesus’ stories blend right into the stories of our world.  It’s nothing new.  If Christianity is only for people who deserve it, or have earned it, then God might as well not have come to earth.  God coming to earth is not “business as usual.”  It’s about something else, something new. 

            The fact that God chooses to come to earth as a vulnerable child, and that God chooses to speak to weirdos says to us that we can never expect something “safe” or ordinary from God again.  The fact that God speaks to the dysfunctional and the broken and the hurting is proof enough that we can expect God to do the extraordinary.  In Jesus God did something so radically new that the world was set in a new direction.  How can we live into this new thing that God is doing?

            God isn’t done doing new things.  God continues to be present in ways unexpected.  God continues to reach forgotten corners, heals what is beyond repair, and brings life and light into darkness.  It’s still happening, do you perceive it? 

             Let us maintain high expectations for God to work in our world in ways beyond our comprehension.  Let us claim the extraordinary as a part of our shared story.  Let us allow ourselves to be absolutely blown away by God’s consistent and unexpected presence in our lives. 

            How might things change if we expected what was thought to be impossible?  What might we dare to hope for?  Through this child that the Magi visit, the lame walk, the blind see, justice is brought for the oppressed and people who were thought to be left out of the story are brought in.  Extraordinary, awesome things have happened and are still happening.  Let’s be a part of it.