A Guiding LightL: Sermon Luke 2:22-40

Dear God, take our minds and think through them; take our hands and feet and work through them; take our lips and speak through them, take our hearts and set them on fire for you. Amen

If I were to ask you what a lighthouse is, most of you would know. Although we do not live anywhere near a coastline we have either been to a coastline, or read about lighthouses in books, or saw lighthouses in movies or on TV. In any case, you would recognize one if you saw it. You know its purpose. Lighthouses were created as guiding lights to aide sailors as they navigated treacherous waters and there is many a sailor who owes his or her life to these guiding lights.

Today’s lesson is about a guiding light of another kind. We continue the Birth Narrative in Luke that began on Christmas Eve. In these verses from Luke the Christ Child is presented at the Temple as was all first-born Jewish male children and Mary made her purification offering at the Temple. Mary and Joseph were proper Jewish parents and so they fulfilled what the law required. As they were coming into the Temple they ran into two prophets, a man and woman who immediately recognized Jesus for who he was. Simeon was advanced in years, but he had a promise from God that he would see the one who would free Israel. Before he died he would see the Messiah. Now the Temple was a busy place and there must have been hundreds if not thousands of babies coming in and out of the Temple on any given day, but Simeon and Anna knew Jesus right then and there. Jesus did not look any different. He did not have a halo around his head or special markings that marked him as the Christ. How did Simeon and Anna know? Luke tells us that it was the Holy Spirit that gave them the insight to see who Jesus really was and today it is still the Holy Spirit that lets us know who Jesus is and that he is our guiding light.

You see a guiding light only works when you recognize what it represents. If you did not know what a lighthouse meant, some warn of dangerous reefs and rocks, some guide ships to safe harbors, then the lighthouse does you no good. You must recognize the purpose of the guiding light in order for it to guide you. Most people, even the most staunch secular humanist historian, agree that Jesus lived on earth. They agree he was born, that he lived and taught, that he had a following, and that he was crucified by the Roman government. There is enough empirical evidence for scholars to agree on this. They would not believe that he was born of a virgin, that he performed miracles of healing, that he fed a multitudes, they certainly do not believe that he rose from the dead.

Thomas Jefferson was one of those people. After he left the presidency he worked to remake the gospels. He took a Bible and literally cut out all the supernatural aspects of the gospels leaving only the teachings of Christ. He believed that Jesus was perhaps the greatest teacher who ever lived, but was not divine. He saw the guiding light, but didn’t recognize it. He saw the man, but not the Savior. He saw the teacher, but not the healer. He saw the dead man, but not the risen God. There are many like him. There are many who call themselves Christians who do not believe some of the supernatural aspects of the story of Christ. The see the guiding light, but they do not follow it.

Why do we recognize Jesus for who he really is? How is it that we came to know Jesus as our Lord and Savior? To answer these questions we must look back at our story from Luke. Simeon and Anna recognized Jesus through the power of the Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit guided Simeon to the Temple so he could see the Christ child and the Holy Spirit gave Simeon the vision to see which baby was Jesus. Every person who encounters Jesus and recognizes who he really is does so by the power of the Holy Spirit. John the Baptist recognized Jesus even while both were in the wombs of their mothers. He could not see Jesus, but it was the Holy Spirit that caused him to jump for joy. When Jesus called the disciples it was the Holy Spirit that let them know that this man was something different. When we said yes to Christ it was not only of our own accord, but by the power of the Holy Spirit. Every person who sees Jesus and recognizes him as their guiding light as the Light of the World does so by the power of the Holy Spirit. Paul says this in 1 Corinthians twice once in 2:9-10. “What no eye has seen, nor ear heard, nor the human heart conceived, what God has prepared for those who love him” these things God has revealed to us through the Spirit; for the Spirit searches everything, even the depths of God.” And again in 12:3 “Therefore I want you to understand that no one speaking by the Spirit of God ever says ‘Let Jesus be cursed!’ and no one can say ‘Jesus is Lord’ except by the Holy Spirit.”

We recognize Jesus as Lord and Savior. We recognize the guiding light of Christ through the Holy Spirit. This means that God’s grace was working in us before we even knew it and before we said yes to Christ. Wesley called this prevenient grace, the grace that comes before. Wesley said that humans are too selfish and sinful to make a right choice and so every good choice we make, including the choice to accept Christ is also done by God through his Holy Spirit. It is because of God’s prevenient grace that the Holy Spirit works through every person.

So why doesn’t every person believe in Jesus? Like with any guiding light you can ignore it or misinterpreted it. The Spirit might be nudging you and nudging you, but you keep pushing it farther and farther back. Like in the old hymn “Almost Persuaded” we can push the Spirit away until one day it might be too late. A ship’s captain can see a lighthouse and choose to ignore its warnings to his and his crews peril. We can see the guiding light of Christ through the power of the Holy Spirit and choose to ignore it. We don’t want to follow Christ, we want to go our own way. We follow our own maps, our own path until we crash ashore and run aground. We all run aground every now and then. The good news is that even through we have ignored him in the past he is still illuminating our path. As we end another year and begin a new one, let us renew our commitment to Christ and our commitment to follow his guiding light.

I want to close this morning with one of my favorite prayers. It is the Wesleyan Covenant prayer. Let us pray.

A Covenant Prayer in the Wesleyan Tradition
I am no longer my own, but thine.
Put me to what thou wilt, rank me with whom thou wilt.
Put me to doing, put me to suffering.
Let me be employed by thee or laid aside for thee,
Exalted for thee or brought low for thee.
Let me be full, let me be empty.
Let me have all things, let me have nothing.
I freely and heartily yield all things
To thy pleasure and disposal.
And now, O glorious and blessed God,
Father, Son, and Holy Spirit,
Thou art mine, and I am thine. So be it.
And the covenant which I have made on earth,
Let it be ratified in heaven.
Amen.

A World Turned Upside Down: Sermon Luke 1:46-55

Lord Jesus, help us to see you more clearly, to love you more dearly, to follow you more nearly day by day. Open our eyes, Lord, help us to see you. Amen.

When Alice tumbled down the rabbit-hole and into Wonderland she found herself in a world turned upside down. She thought she tumbled right through to the other side of the earth where the people would be upside down. Alice was a stranger in a strange land and nothing made sense. She could not get her bearings, she did not know which way was up or down, left or right. Alice’s story is, of course, a work of fiction, a fantasy dreamed up by Lewis Carroll. However, when we are struck by sudden, sometimes tragic news, we might fell a lot like Alice. We feel as though our world turned upside down. We might feel as though we have tumbled down the rabbit-hole wondering when we will hit rock bottom. We do not like thinking about these things and we are never prepared for them when they happen so what do we do?

Let us look at the example of Mary, the mother of Jesus. She certainly felt as though her world turned upside down when the angel Gabriel visited her and told her the news that she would give birth to the Christ child. Imagine that for a moment. Mary, by tradition, was a teenager 14 or 15 years old. She was preparing for her marriage to Joseph. She was to leave her parents house and enter into her husband’s house. That was the way things were done in those days. She was to be pure for her husband, a virgin. Now she was going to have a baby, not just a baby, but God’s baby. Who would believe her? It is a crazy story. An angel appeared and said you will have God’s child. Yeah, right. Most people would think that she went off and got knocked up by some guy. This was more than an embarrassment, by law and tradition she could be stoned to death for adultery. This could cost her life or at the very least she would be shunned and exiled from her family and community. Her world was turned upside down. What could she do? What did she do? In spite of all that stacked against her, she trusted God. I am sure she did not know how it would all work out, but she had faith that it would work out. Not only does Mary accept her role in this story despite its potential hardships and dangers, but she praises God for the opportunity. Our lesson from Luke this morning is Mary’s song of praise called the Magnificat. She begins by saying that her soul magnifies the Lord because the Mighty One has done great things for her. She trusts that although she cannot see it now this event will be a great thing and that through her God’s glory will shine brighter. God’s glory will be shone through her obedience and trust. What would we do in a situation like this? I don’t think I would be near as trusting as Mary is in this story. I might be doing a lot more questioning and worrying. In reality, God is calling us to service everyday, it is not in the same way that he called Mary, but if we are faithful and trustworthy then we, like Mary, will glorify God through our actions.

Mary is part of a beautiful story, one that most of us know by heart. Just as Mary’s world would never be the same after her visit from Gabriel, the birth of her child would change the whole world forever. Through the birth, life, death, and resurrection of that child in her womb the world would be turned upside down.

Mary gives us a glimpse into the changes that will take place because of her son. She is so confident in those changes that she speaks of them in the past tense, as if they have already happened. We saw then, see now, and will see a reversal, literally a world turned upside down. Mary sings that the “[God] has brought down the powerful from their thrones, and lifted up the lowly.” In that moment, she is the lowly that is raised up. God could have chosen a queen or a princess, a woman of status and power to bear his child, but instead he chooses a servant girl, a peasant, a nobody. This is the beginning of a reversal that Jesus continues to speak about in his ministry. He teaches the disciples that the greatest in the kingdom of God will be the servant of all. The greatest will be the least of all. Mary sings that God has filled the poor with good things and sent the rich away empty. She is the poor that is filled with the Holy Spirit. Jesus feds the multitude of poor and the rich young ruler leaves because he does not want to part with his money. Jesus makes a clear distinction that a person cannot serve both God and money. There has to be a choice made. Mary sings about God remembering his mercy to his people, a promise that was made through the prophets. We read some of those promises last week. In Christ those promises are fulfilled not just in that moment 2,000 years ago, but in every moment for all eternity. Christ is the embodiment of God’s love and all of this begins when Mary said “Yes God, I trust you.” The world is turned upside down. The rich are now poor, the poor are rich, the powerful are brought low and the humble are exalted.

This change, these reversals should not be anything new to us, because everyone who is truly touched by Christ is never the same again. Mary is never the same. The disciples are never the same. The blind, the lame, the leper, the tax collector, the prostitute, the sinner is never the same. Pilate is never the same. The Roman soldier who nailed him to the cross is never the same. Paul is never the same. We are never the same again. In Christ our world is turned upside down. It is such a change that Paul calls those in Christ “new creations” with the old gone and new brought in. Our priorities change. We no longer search for riches that will rust and the thief can steal, but we search for treasures in the kingdom of God. We no longer seek for ourselves first, but we work to help others. We seek first the kingdom of God and all other things will be added to us.

Advent is a time for us to examine our hearts and our lives to see whether or not we have been truly changed by the Christ child. Has your life been touched by Christ? Is your world turned upside down? How much have we changed and how much more to we need to change? Remember that the change is not instantaneous. It takes time to change our ways and repent from our wrongdoings, but progress must be made. We have to show some progress in our lives. We must always be moving forward.

You see change is a funny things because as we change those around us change. As we change we can change the world. We do this by practicing the teachings of Jesus, by embodying the change that is going on the inside. We cannot keep our lights hidden. We have to shine upon the world. We do it by the power of God and for the glory of God just as Mary did.

There is a far better way of living in the world, and on this Fourth Sunday of Advent we stand at its threshold. The question, however, is: Are we willing to step forward? Or are we afraid to have our world turned upside down? Are we the poor who will hear the good news of reversal, or are we the ones responsible for their poverty? Are we the brokenhearted who will be healed, or have we broken their hearts? Are we the captives who will be freed, or are we the captors who have restrained them? On what side of the reversals do we find ourselves?
Advent is a time to search our hearts, to discover where, both individually and as a community, we need to change. It is a time of expectation, for we are told that there is one who has the power to heal our personal brokenness, to heal our fractured families, to heal our troubled church, to heal our bleeding world. Paul tells us that he is coming; John tells us that he is already in our midst. His presence among us should make us rejoice; the saving power that he brings should give us confidence. If we open our hearts to this saving power, we can indeed transform our society; we can renew our church, we can work toward peace in the world—we can turn our world upside down.
Let us pray…
Grant, O Lord,
that what has been said with our lips we may believe in our hearts,
and that what we believe in our hearts we may practice in our lives;
through Jesus Christ our Lord by the power of the Holy Spirit. Amen.

Season of Hope: Isaiah 61:1-4, 8-11

Lord Jesus, help us to see you more clearly, to love you more dearly, to follow you more nearly day by day. Open our eyes, Lord, help us to see you. Amen.

It's beginning to look a lot like Christmas
Ev'rywhere you go;
Take a look in the five and ten glistening once again
With candy canes and silver lanes aglow.
It's beginning to look a lot like Christmas
Toys in ev'ry store
But the prettiest sight to see is the holly that will be
On your own front door.

I know I know I am no Perry Como or Johnny Mathis, but it is looking a lot like Christmas everywhere we go. Of course if you went to Wal-Mart it looked like Christmas back in September, but gradually our community is getting into the Christmas spirit. The Advent/Christmas season is filled with lots of things. There are lights on our houses and on our Christmas trees. There is Christmas music filling the stores, our homes and cars, and Sunday church services. There are parties to go to, presents to wrap and open, friends and family to visit with and lots and lots of food to eat. Then there is the whole Jesus being born in Bethlehem thing that, unfortunately, gets put on the backburner. Taking all that stuff aside Advent and Christmas is season of hope.
The word hope is a funny word because it can mean so many different things to different people. I am a lucky person. I live in a great country and in a great community. I have a job and a great family who supports me. My hopes might seem something like this; I hope I get that new gadget for Christmas. I hope that the Titans make it to the Super Bowl. I think a lot of you are in the same boat as me. We hope for things that most of the world think are frivolous. You see there are some in our country and some in our own community that hope they will have enough food to put on their table. They hope they can give their kids a warm coat and maybe one toy this Christmas. They hope they can pay all the bills and have some left over. They hope they still have a job. Then again there are some in the world who simply hope to live to see another day. They hope that bandits won’t come today to take their sons and rape their daughters. They hope the water they drink to quench their burning thirst won’t give them a deadly disease. You see hope differs greatly depending where and who you are in the world.
Our words from the prophet Isaiah this morning are words of hope to a people decimated by war and exile. These words are a promise from God for a complete and total restoration and redemption of the people and their land. But it will not be the same as before. The prophet proclaims that the poor, the captive, and the prisoner will be freed and they are the ones who will rebuild the destroyed kingdom. In verse 4 the pronoun “they” is used, “they” refers to the captives, poor, and prisoners mentioned in verse 1. If some hope that things will be exactly as they were before they will be disappointed because this new era God will usher in is a season of justice, righteousness, and freedom to all people not just to some.
This hope from Isaiah like most hope found in Scripture is twofold in nature. There are two kinds of hope found here. One is a cosmic kind of hope. It is a universal hope that death is not the end but that it is conquered by the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ. The theologically this term is eschatological in nature, which means that it is a hope based on the second coming of Christ and the redemption of the world as promises in Revelation 21 and 22. It is an Easter hope because without the death and resurrection of Christ we would not have this hope. We hope that just as Christ is risen we will also rise with him. This hope is the foundation of our faith. There are some branches of Christianity that do not rely upon the belief in the resurrection of Christ but in my opinion that without the resurrection believing in and proclaiming the gospel of Christ is pointless. No resurrection, no Christianity. We all are familiar with this kind of hope although its exact mechanics and nature are difficult to ascertain. This is a hope that we must wait for. It is a hope that will come in God’s own time. Jesus was asked about it and said that not even he knew the day nor the hour no one but God knew. That is one key element of Advent is a waiting, an anticipation of the fulfillment of our hope. We must wait for this kind of hope. But there is another hope that is scripturally based and is found in our lesson from Isaiah.
This hope is not based on future events, but it is in the here and now or at least it can be because this hope is in us. It is the hope that provides liberty to the captives, release to the prisoners, and good news to the poor. It is the year of the Lord’s favor and it is a time of rebuilding not only cities and buildings but rebuilding people. It is a time that is based on our actions and our fulfillment of God’s commandments. God is telling us in this Scripture the key to fulfilling this hope and we do not have to wait for it because it is within our grasp. God is telling us that if we fulfill his commandments, his teachings of love for all people then we can be the hope that we want to see in the world. We can be the ones to release people held captive by poverty and injustice. We can be the ones to free those imprisoned unjustly and unfairly. We can be the oaks of righteousness standing tall for the world to see. We can be that hope that people long for.
I know what you might be thinking. Here he goes again, preaching social justice. I wish he would talk about something else. Why do we need to talk about this over and over again? Well this is what Jesus preached. Jesus preached social justice. In fact, Jesus begins his ministry in Nazareth by reading from these verses in Isaiah. He said that the Scriptures are fulfilled in him. The people of Nazareth flipped out and ran him out of town. What does Jesus mean? He is the catalyst for both kinds of hope. Through him we have the Easter hope and through his teachings we have the means to be the present hope to other people. In Jesus we have the example of how to be the hope for other people. Jesus never rejected anyone. Jesus loved everyone no matter who they were or what they did. Jesus touched the leper, gave sight to the blind, and fed the multitudes. Jesus welcomed the sinner, the outcast, and the stranger. In these acts Jesus gave hope to those without and we can do the same.
When we give a toy to a child like the Marines do every year with Toys 4 Tots then we give hope. When we give food and clothing to the Help Center and the Clothing Center then we give people hope who are down on their luck. When a person can put food on the table for their children then we give them hope that people do care. We need to remember that Advent and Christmas are not just season for hoping but they are also season for being hope for someone else. We are the instruments of God’s hope in the world. Paul called us the hands and the feet of the Body of Christ and if we don’t do something then who will. When we give someone hope then they believe that tomorrow will be a better day, and the next day will be better, and the day after that better still.
I want to close this morning with a warning. Isaiah makes a small statement that has big implications. In verse 2 Isaiah proclaims a day of God’s vengeance. Who will God take vengeance upon? If we look at verse 1 we have the answer. God’s vengeance is for those who captured and imprisoned the people unjustly, it is for those who promote injustice or do nothing to change it. It is for the ones who ignore the poor, the widow, the orphan. It is for the ones who afflict the immigrant, the stranger in our land. When that day comes, where do you want to be? Do you want to be on the side of God or on the side of God’s vengeance? Let us work together to be on God’s side. To give a little hope to those without and let us not just do it at Christmas time, but all year long. We are the ones who hear the message from God through the prophet. We are the ones who hear the message from God through our Lord and Savior. Let us not ignore this important call from God. Let us be the hope for those who are longing for it.

Dear God, take our minds and think through them; take our hands and feet and work through them; take our lips and speak through them, take our hearts and set them on fire for you. Amen