Made to Grow

For as the earth brings forth its sprouts, and as a garden causes what is sown in it to sprout up, so the Lord God will cause righteousness and praise to sprout up before all the nations. – Isaiah 61:11

My parents had a minor garden emergency the other day. The roots of one of their shrubs had grown under the PVC water line, lifted it and caused a restriction. All the water was squirting out onto the neighbor’s house. Dad was out splicing in a new section of pipe and removing the root. I commented how different it was in late December dealing with growing things. The oranges and grapefruit were far along and looking good. The flower bush that mom had cut down to nothing because it was covering the window was back to the bottom of the window. In Illinois and New York, this is fallow time, everything under a blanket of snow. Things never really stop growing here as long as they get water. I even had to send Ethan out to spray the yard for weeds.

This is something of mystery to me. I have no idea how anything grows in this clay almost rock. But it does. I suppose that is akin to looking at the fallow snow cover and thinking about the Spring. It is that sense of mystery that the prophet is evoking. “As the earth brings for its sprouts, and as a garden causes what is sown in it to sprout up.” How does it do that? Yes, we can go back to High School biology class and give some type of explanation. But really, how does it know when to start? That line of questioning always ends in invoking something like “the seed senses the change in temperature” or “the change in light.” Really, the seed senses? I suppose we should be talking about the mind of the plant? I think Jesus is a little more honest, “He sleeps and rises night and day, and the seed sprouts and grows; he knows not how. (Mk. 4:27 ESV)” When you put seeds in the earth, they grow. That is what they were made to do.

Now all Hebrew poetry is parallel; what comes before is meant to illuminate what comes after. Seeds are placed in the soil and they do what they are made to do. All nations and peoples and individuals are found within God. In Him we live and move and have our being. And like the seeds in the earth, people produce what they were made to do. “The Lord God will cause righteousness and praise.” The sanctified life is the life we were meant to lead. That is what it means to be fruitful. And we were meant to return that fruit to the LORD in praise. Not every seed grows. Not every person is fruitful. Sometimes wild grapes come up. But we were made for righteousness and praise.

And that fruitfulness is not only a private thing, nor is it only for one people. It will “sprout up before all the nations.” Just as this Arizona rock produces plants appropriate to it and the Iowa loam likewise, peoples of various times and places produce the righteousness and praise appropriate. No nation is left without a witness. And those witnesses do not grow in hothouses or under specialized grow lights. They sprout up before all the nations.

In its larger context the one who grew before all the nations is Jesus Christ. Isaiah 61:1ff is what Jesus cites to Nazareth at the start of his ministry. The LORD has caused righteousness in the form of his son to sprout up before all the nations. As long as we are connected to that vine we also bear fruit. How does this happen? This is the purpose of Christ, that we might have life and have it abundantly. That is what the incarnation was made to do.

The Perfect Gift (Christmas Day)

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Biblical Text: Hebrews 1:1-12

With three sermons in 24 hours sometimes you pick a different text. That is what I did here. The Author of Hebrews explaining why we have the perfect gift in the Son.

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Hope and Realization (Christmas Eve)

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Biblical Text: Luke 2:1-7

The service is lessons and carols, so there are a multiplicity of texts. The real text is the Day – Christmas Eve – and the entire biblical story. This sermon is a reflection upon the dance between Hope and Realization. We really want the realization, but God likes Hope. Don’t get me wrong, there is a lot of realization, but not completed. And until it is complete, we live in Hope and Faith.

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New Creations (Advent 4)

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Biblical Text: Luke 1:26-38

Christmas on a Monday creates a blizzard of sermons. This is Christmas Eve Morning with is still technically Advent 4. It is pondering of the New Creation, that new creation which is Christ, incarnate of the Holy Spirit and the Virgin Mary. And how that new creation is also the fulfillment of the promise to David. That’s the doctrine. The Angel’s announcement to Mary has the doctrine. It also has a direction toward Elizabeth who is someone to share it with. Mary has the doctrine, Mary has a community that shares it, and the response the Mary gives is that of faith. Mary in this is our pattern. We receive the proclamation even if we might not understand it – the doctrine. We are made part of the family – the church. And what is asked is faith.

Christmas Ghosts

Everybody’s favorite Christmas story is a ghost story. There are quibbles theologians have with Dickens’ tale. They would usually trot out things like its overwhelming use of the law. You don’t get more heavy than Marley’s chains or a ghost pointing at a grave with your own name. Usually quickly after, they’d complain about works righteousness. Old Scrooge seemingly saves himself by keeping Christmas. But to me these complaints have always felt like the internet’s midwit meme. Cletus Noforks and Thomas Aquinas both agree Scrooge has had a conversion and is making amends where possible, and the point of the law is to kill the old Adam. It takes the midwit – and Dickens is far from a midwit – to theologically dismember and neuter one of the great stories of a visitation.

The more interesting thing to me is the Christmas history of ghost stories. It isn’t just Dickens. And it isn’t just the Victorians, although both of them might be the high point of the genre. That high point might go along with being the origin point of everything we call Christmas. Albert and Victoria and that sentimental age are what we keep trying to reproduce. Although recently I’ve felt changes in the zeitgeist. Christmas itself will never go away, but the celebration of it has gone through quite a few forgettings and reinventions. And we are left with trappings of previous stories, like a yule log from the medieval celebrations or candles which go all the way back to Roman Saturnalia. Trappings that are like visitations of old ghosts half remembered but welcomed as bearing good tidings.

The author David Foster Wallace, who paradoxically did more for the 1000 page door stopper of a novel, will probably be best remembered for an aphorism, “every ghost story is a love story.” The Christmas Ghosts are not poltergeists or the spooks of Halloween. The Christmas Ghosts are the visitations of things we love and long for. Memories of whoever is your Old Fezziwig. The desires for hearth and home. The deep longings for peace that you can almost feel at midnight on the 24^th. The hope that things can be fixed if just for a golden hour while angels sing. Even Scrooge’s ghosts, which like the law never feels good when applied to ourselves, are a love story. Marley’s purgatorial love for someone with chains far longer, but who might have time. God’s love for the sinner so lost he doesn’t even know it. Even though surrounded by a great cloud of Fezziwig’s, Cratchet’s and Nephew Fred’s.

Ghost stories at Christmas are entirely appropriate. Because every ghost is a visitation of something beyond. And Christmas is the ultimate visitation of something beyond – the great and mighty wonder. Somehow the one through whom all things were made, fit himself inside the humble flesh of a baby, born to a virgin mother. Someone who could not know what she was saying yes to. A family sent far from home and hearth by an unconcerned world. The King of Peace would enter the warfare of a lost world. The God who had always hid his face would reveal it to the world. And though the world would not recognize him, would not receive his visitation, those who will receive him he makes into his treasured possession. At Christmas we have been visited by the love of the Father, the end of all those inchoate longings that conjure up the Spirits. The ghost stories of Christmas are reflections of this great visitation of love. The light that comes out of the darkness that the darkness cannot overcome.

Witnesses to the Light

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Biblical Text: John 1:6-8, 19-28

It is interesting to me how different John the Baptist is in the Synoptic Gospels (Matthew, Mark and Luke) from the Gospel of John. Not impossible to reconcile, especially when you consider the reasons for the Synoptic portrayal, but the evangelist John has a much different purpose. The Baptist is not so much the last Old Testament prophet as a Christian pattern. To the evangelist the Baptists is not the Christ, nor Elijah, nor The Prophet. He is simply a witness to the light that all might believe. Which is not so different from the Christian calling – to be a witness to the light.

And it is in that witness that the Christian finds their authority. The authority to make straight the paths. Discerning what that means in any issue is not easy, but like John, if you have people asking you “who do you think you are?” You have an answer. I am a witness.

Personal note: Most sermons you have a vague idea how they might be received. It is the sermons that you are attempting to say something a little deeper that you don’t know. Sometimes you love it, but it was too personal and just confuses people. Sometimes you don’t like it (but the clock has run out) and people like it much better than you expect. Sometimes you divide congregations. This is one that I felt right giving. It is also one where the audio contains a couple extra lines in the moment that I think made it better.

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Dear Paul

What is your most scandalous opinion? Well, it’s not really scandalous; it is just treating a serious subject lightly, but sometimes that is necessary. I could always elicit gasps and chuckles by saying “The Apostle Paul is just the best advice columnist of all time.” And then by defending the statement. Of course with the demise of papers and reading in general, the advice columnist has kinda disappeared. Ann Landers and Dear Abby are long gone along with their upper-middle-class striver pragmatism. I think Dead Prudie still writes over at Slate.com but it feels so 200X. And her questions and advice always left me muttering “sheep without a shepherd.” You were better off taking advice from blast from the past Dan Savage who wasn’t as insulated from the craters Prudie’s advice would create. He might still give you the same terrible advice, but he’s also leaven it with reality. I see that Tucker Carlson, as part of his new media adventure, has created an “ask Tucker” forum. His first answer to the Father who is worried about his daughter starting an Only Fans, oh my. But I promised to get around to the Apostle Paul.

We all know that Paul wrote letters. And if we have read those letters, we realize that Paul was in almost constant contact with his fledgling congregations. It wasn’t the USPS, but letters in the Roman world would get to their destination on good Roman roads. Most of Paul’s letters are not theological treatises that he made up. Maybe Romans is that. Romans is also a prospectus for investment in a missionary endeavor. “I preach the gospel, I want to go to Spain, please support me (Romans 15:24).” But most of Paul’s letters are responses to multiple letters asking “Dear Paul.”

Paul would answer at length two or three big questions. For example, in 1 First Thessalonians – probably the first book of the New Testament written – Paul reminds the Thessalonians of the Work of the Lord in their midst and how the Thessalonians are now the example for those around them (chapters 1-3). He then reminds them what that looks like and reinforces the hope of the resurrection (Chapter 4). You can imagine the questions. “Paul, how do we go about evangelism?” “Paul, what about those who have died?”

But then Paul has this stack of other questions and the letter is already feeling long. So what does he do? He does things like our short Epistle reading this week – 1 Thessalonians 5:16-24. The world’s first lighting round of rapid fire advice answers.

Paul, what does Jesus really want from us anyway? “Rejoice always, pray without ceasing, give thanks in all circumstances; for this is the will of God in Christ Jesus for you.”

Paul, my brother is always babbling about the Spirit this and the Spirit that. I’ve seen a vision brother. Please tell him to stop! “Do not quench the Spirit. Do not despise prophecies, but test everything; hold fast to what is good.”

Paul, to get ahead at work I occasionally have to do things that you probably wouldn’t approve of. Is there a way to get a dispensation or an indulgence? “Abstain from every form of evil.”

And like all good advice columnists, Paul’s missives are occasionally shocking. They are probably not the advice you want to hear. But they are good. They are good in the deep sense of that word. Paul wants the best for you. As he says in his sign off. “Now may the God of peace himself sanctify you completely.” That is what Paul’s advice wants for you. God has called, gathered and enlightened you. Keep running. God will also sanctify you and on That Day glorify you. It is Good advice.

Mary’s Song

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Biblical Text: Luke 1:46-55

This was our 2nd midweek advent. We took up the 2nd song in Luke 1 – Mary’s Song. Often called the Magnificat, which is simply the Latin for magnify. And that is the word that this meditation picks up and plays with. What exactly does it mean for a soul to magnify the Lord? And why would anyone do that?

(Note: Sorry about the recording, I don’t have one right now. All the copies left the building before I could grab one. When one comes back I’ll rip it.)

Her Warfare is Over

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Biblical Text: Isaiah 40:1-11

The jump from Isaiah 39 to Isaiah 40 is one of the big discontinuities of the Bible. With Hezekiah’s cynicism Isaiah turns to a far future generation. That got me thinking this week about some of my mystery verses. What I mean by that is verses that make simple sense, but that simple sense doesn’t make theological sense. At least not easy theological sense. This sermon is an attempt, through John the Baptist promised by Isaiah, to understand what might be called generational sin. When the weight of sin long neglected catches up with us, what do we do?

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Perfection

Part of the job of a pastor is encouragement to live the Christian life. Part of the problem is that encouragement can take many forms, and you are not always sure which one is needed. Is the encouragement more about finding lost sheep and calling the straying back to faith? That is the encouragement to pursue holiness. In our day and age there is a lot more of this. Maybe that is the truth in every age. Most of us are always willing to cut ourselves some slack. And pretty soon all we have is slack. But then you occasionally run across the striving sick soul. Maybe in the Christmas season we can understand the perfectionist better. We all are trying to be a little better. We all want that perfect Christmas. And then nobody cares, or nobody recognizes it, or something small happens and mars that perfection. This is Luther in his life as a monk. There are still those rare Christians who are attempting to “be perfect as your father in heaven is perfect (Matthew 5:48).” And there are those who can be like the rich young man. “All these I have kept since I was a child. (Mark 10:20).” And their answer is more correct than we Lutherans might like to admit. After all Jesus looks at the man and loves him.

I know that not everyone appreciates sports examples, but a current one is just too perfect. The Florida State football team was perfect. They were pursuing perfection. But then in the game to get to 11-0 their star Quarterback goes out for the season with a gruesome leg injury. But they persevered. The back-up Quarterback stepped in and beat the instate rival Florida to get to 12-0. But in that game the backup got a concussion and was “placed in the protocol.” Going into the conference championship game they were down to a true freshman 3^rd string quarterback. They did everything you’d want in such a situation. The defense picked up the slack holding a team that has been scoring 30 a game to 6. The freshmen helped by a career game from a running back got them 16 points. They finished the season 13-0. Perfect. A more gracious God might have said well done faithful servant and recognized their deservedness. They did everything correct from early in the season, enduring the hardships and finding ways.

It didn’t matter. The playoff committee cut them. The judged perfection was not enough.

What is the encouragement? It is ultimately not about your record. Yes, the law demands perfection. But there has only been one perfect person in the history of the world, and where did he end up? On a cross. Perfection is overrated. What isn’t overrated is that cross. More than perfection, God asks you to trust Him. Pick up your cross and follow. Even perfection is going to look like a loss. It is going to feel like a loss. And by the world’s standards will be. You will be outside the playoffs. But as the Apostle Paul would say, “everything I was I count as loss.” Because winning by the rules of the world is still losing. This world and its playoff committees are passing away. Only the things placed on that cross will stay. Only the righteousness which comes through faith in Christ attains the resurrection.