A New Year's Resolution

January 1, 2017 (Christmas 1)—The Feast of the Holy Name

John1.1–14

          When I was a boy, I loved the Boy Scout troop to which I belonged. To this day I think our scoutmaster, Mr. Ireland, an auto mechanic who also sang in the choir at the Methodist church that our family attended, was the greatest guy in the world. For twenty-five years he ran the greatest Boy Scout troop imaginable. It was my privilege to be part of that troop for almost eight years. I rose to the rank of Eagle Scout and then became a junior assistant scoutmaster. I cherish the memories I have of those happy days. But early on, I almost gave up and quit the troop. When I was a tenderfoot, one of the older boys, by which I mean a twelve year old, sent me on a fool’s errand. They didn’t want me to help with cooking dinner; so in order to get rid of me, they sent me out to find “a left-handed monkey wrench,” which they said they needed. ‘Where can I find that?” I asked. “I don’t’ know," he said, “Just ask around, someone always has one.” So I went around the camp asking for a left-handed monkey wrench, until it finally dawned on me that there was no such thing, I was being made fun of. After that, I felt so humiliated that I almost quit the scouts. But I didn’t quit; I got over it. Still I learned a lesson. Many times in life, people tell us things that aren’t true and we believe them, and so we waste a lot of time in life embracing false notions.

       I suppose many people would equate preachers of the gospel with that boy who sent me on the fool’s errand. They feel we’re pulling the wool over their eyes by asking them to believe a message that can’t possibly be true. In the minds of many, the gospel of God becoming man incarnate—the divine nature assuming the fullness of human nature in order to redeem human nature and divinize it so that, in the words of Saint Peter, we might “become partakers of the divine nature” (2Pet.1.4)—is so fantastical that no sane person actually would be so gullible as to believe it. Right? I mean those who preach this tall tale don’t, themselves, believe it, do they?

       I met a man once whose hobby, so to speak, was tracking down and interviewing people who had encountered space aliens. He had encountered a space alien once, he said, and that encounter changed his life. Furthermore, he said that he had documentary proof of space aliens, who, for some reason have taken a liking to Jacksonville, Florida. You smile at that. I smile at that. We both recognize that this man and others like him are delusional. But how different are they from people who believe that Jesus, a man from Galilee, was fully God? Aren’t people who are skeptical of the claims of the gospel as right to be skeptical of that gospel as we are today to doubt the sanity of those who insist that they have been assaulted by space aliens? What makes the one narrative sacred and the other ridiculous? Isn’t it just a matter of 'he said, she said'? So one man believes in Jesus, another believes in space aliens; aren’t they both essentially engaged in the same act of self-deception, of seeking escape in a story that dresses up this naked existentialist farce we call life in a glamorous romance? I ask you seriously, adult to adult: you don’t really take the gospel to be anything more serious than tales of space aliens, do you? I know that some of you are thinking: I’ve been to Roswell, New Mexico, I know there’s something in that warehouse that the government's keeping secret from us. If there’s something really there, Trump will bring it out and make a reality show of it; that will be great!

       You know, there is a ”scientific” program called SETI (Search for Extra-Terrestrial Intelligence) that is ongoing. As I speak, some of the great minds of our age are busy searching the stars and listening to radios for evidence of intelligent life out there, somewhere on the edge of the universe. Many people who search for extra-terrestrial intelligence, like those who believe in space aliens and UFOs, have two things in common with those who preach the gospel. They believe that human intelligence did not cause itself, that there has to be a prior cause to intelligent human life beyond this planet. And two: many others think they are deluded for believing what they believe and that they are squandering their lives and talents to spend a lifetime searching for what amounts to a left-handed monkey wrench. Whether it’s a search for God or for space invaders, it’s a search for something that doesn’t actually exist beyond the borders of the minds of those who imagine it. Many will say that a belief in God, like a belief in UFOs, is akin to a belief in unicorns or the tooth fairy; a complete fantasy.

       Before we dismiss the gospel as complete fantasy, let me make three points. If you don’t believe that intelligent human life has a provenance beyond this planet, then you believe that intelligent life formed randomly from the stuff of the earth; that carbon and magnesium and a couple of dozen other chemicals came together in just the right proportions in a pond, lightening struck it, and voilà! Several million years later you have Hamlet lamenting, “O what a rogue and peasant slave am I.” Talk about science fiction, talk about fantasy. As one Nobel laureate put it, the chances that this universe, hospitable to human life, happened randomly are equal to the chances that a wind could blow through a junkyard and produce a fully assembled Boeing 747. There is no cult in the history of mankind more superstitious than that of the modern dogmatic secular atheist, who clings to the absurdist view of life despite all the evidence against it.

       Which leads to the second point: I don’t criticize those who believe in extra-terrestrial intelligence. I also believe that there is a greater intelligence beyond the confines of this planet. But you’re not going to find it by looking through a telescope. The message of Christmas is one to which those who believe in such things should be receptive, because the Christmas message is that the greatest intelligence in the universe, that which conceived of the universe and formed it, the very source of life itself has revealed himself to us. We don’t have to search the stars for the answer to our question,” From where did intelligent life originate?” The magi who were led by a star to Bethlehem already did that. We know that an extra-terrestrial mind conceived the universe; because the author of life has revealed himself to us. The mind of God, that which was in the beginning, before there was time or a material universe—"the Eternal Word," Saint John called him—has come among us and spoken to us. Or, as the writer of the letter to the Hebrews put it, ”In many and various ways God spoke of old to our fathers by the prophets, but in these last days he has spoken to us by a Son, whom he appointed the heir of all things, through whom also he created the world…upholding the universe by his word of power” (Heb.1.1–3). The difference between those who search for extra-terrestrial intelligence and those who believe in Jesus Christ is that those who believe in Jesus Christ have already found what the others are vainly searching for.

      Three: Unlike those who search for higher forms of intelligence in the universe or who document encounters with space aliens, the gospel of Jesus Christ doesn’t seek to prove anything. The gospel only seeks to give a faithful account to what happened in Galilee two–thousand years ago, to be an honest witness to a historic event. “You shall… be my witnesses” Jesus said to his disciples before he ascended by his own volition into heaven. That a man who just six weeks earlier had died in a public crucifixion, witnessed by the city of Jerusalem, could stand among his friends and talk to them before ascending into heaven from whence he had come thirty-three years earlier, is a tale taller than the wildest science fiction. Why should anyone believe this? The answer the church has made to a doubting world for twenty centuries is just this: believe the gospel because it’s true. God really did this.

      “Did what?” you ask again incredulously. The Word, that is eternal God, became flesh and dwelt among us (John1.14). That’s what happened when Christ was born in Bethlehem. The task of the church is not to prove it. But to faithfully proclaim it. To tell generation after generation what happened, so that they will know who God is and where to find him.

       But what if no one believes you because your story is so preposterous?  It doesn’t matter.  If it’s the truth, keep proclaiming it. The elect, those “who have ears to hear” as Jesus said, will hear and believe. As in the parable of the sower who just aimlessly throws the seeds wherever, God does the rest. And so it is with preaching the gospel. Our task as a church is to tell the story. God knows in whose heart the gospel will find a home.

      God knew this was going to be the case, that people would roll their eyes and laugh in the face of the dogma of the incarnation, of a Virgin birth announced by angels, of a star over Bethlehem, of scriptures fulfilled, of that same child born of Mary rising from his grave by his own volition, thereby revealing his divine nature. God knew the world would laugh. He said through the prophets, “I am doing a work in your days that you would not believe if told” (Hab.1.5). Many have been told what Jesus accomplished on the cross, many don’t believe.

     Saint John, who witnessed Jesus’s baptism, stood beside his mother at the foot of the cross, and three days later saw him alive, said of that revelation, “We beheld his glory, glory as of the only Son of the Father (John1.14). ”Moses longed to see the glory of God but it was denied him (Ex.33.18–23). What was denied to Moses, Christ privileged his apostles to see (John 1.18). Saint John would say again in his first letter: “That which was from the beginning, which we have heard, which we have seen with our eyes, which we have looked upon, and touched with our hands, concerning the word of life—the life was made manifest, and we saw it and testify to it and proclaim to you the eternal life which was with the Father and was made manifest to us—that which we have seen and heard we proclaim to you” (1John 1.1–3).

     That is the Christmas message. Now we know. And there is only one follow-up question that matters: now that we know what happened, what are we going to do about it? Are we going to walk away, pretending that the Christmas story is the theological equivalent of science fiction fantasy? Or will we do the right thing? Respond in faith to God. Open your heart to receive his grace, the forgiveness of sins that he offers us in his Son Jesus Christ. Make it your New Year’s resolution to come to church to worship the Lord each Sunday and to do more to grow in knowledge and love of him. There’s always more to do. Why not, this year, come to the Bible Study? Give it a try. Or, as I suggested in the Christmas Eve sermon, read the book Mere Christianity by C.S. Lewis. No book does a better job of explaining why we believe in God and why we trust the Christmas story. We worship a wonderful God who really does love us. Make it your resolution to love him. Let us together make that resolution and keep it with daily, fervent prayer; and a year from now we will all look back as a church and say, “2017 was the best year ever; a year in which we all grew closer to God!” 

The Blessed Virgin Mary

 December 18, 2016—The Fourth Sunday in Advent

       In last Sunday’s sermon, I said that we so often refer to Jesus as “Jesus Christ” that some may be forgiven for thinking that “Christ” is his last name. “Christ,” however, is not his name but his title. Jesus is the “Christ," the Holy One of God (Is:53.11, Mk:1.24), whose coming among us was announced by the prophets. Jesus revealed himself to be the Christ, the King of Israel and Savior of sinful humankind, by perfectly fulfilling those prophecies (Is:35; 53.1-12; 25.6-9).

      In like manner, we so regularly refer to Jesus’s mother as the Blessed Virgin Mary that we are apt to think “Virgin” was her given name. But as with the title Christ, so too “Virgin” is a title given to Jesus’s mother. What that means and why Jesus’s mother should bear this title, with all the reverence it deserves, will be the subject of this very short but poignant homily.

       Jesus’s mother is called not merely “Mary” but is dignified by the title “Virgin,” to call attention to her unique status as the young woman of Isaiah’s prophecy, the virgin who would give birth to him who would be hailed as “Emmanuel, God among us”( Is:7.14; Mt:1.23). As such, her virginity was not only physical, it was spiritual. She who would become the perfect servant of God, whose consent would enable the redemptive act was, as the archangel Gabriel announced, perfect, “full of grace”(Lk:1.28). Mary, by her steadfast obedience, possessed everything that the disobedient Eve had lost. She who was elected to bring about the restoration of humanity to full communion with God was herself holy in the way that the first virgin, Eve, was holy. But where Eve, tempted by the fallen angel, disobeyed God by not trusting his word, Mary proved herself to be a woman of complete integrity, a model of sainthood, the penultimate believer. If only Eve had said to the angel as Mary did to Gabriel, “Let it be unto me according to [God’s] word” (Lk:1.38), how different the history of the world would have been. Where Eve failed, Mary succeeded. Unlike Eve, Mary dedicated herself to God body and soul, keeping herself entirely from sin, and by so doing she earned the title Virgin, with a capital “V.” Where the first virgin, Eve, by her disobedience became the mother of a race of rebellious sinners, the Virgin Mary by her obedience to God became the mother of the faithful, the mother of the church (Jn:19.26–27); the mother of all who receive redemption by grace through faith in God’s only begotten Son, her only son, Jesus Christ.

       Mary was not divine by nature, but her Son was. Many a mother thinks that the sun rises and sets on her child. It is the nature of maternal love for a mother to see God’s image in her child. But in the case of Mary, when she looked into the eyes of Jesus, she saw more there than an image of divinity. She saw in his eyes the very wisdom and holiness of God incarnate among us. When she held her baby to her breast, she held not only a precious gift from God. She held God himself to her breast. Mary a creature of God nursed our Creator. For that reason alone we honor her above all others. For that reason alone, as Mary herself prophesied, “All generations will call me blessed” (Lk:1.48).

       Many people dismiss the gospel of Jesus Christ out of hand as a fiction because they say, as Ernest Hemingway put it, that no “thinking person” believes in the tooth fairy or unicorns let alone deities. We live in a vain and pompous age that worships human reason without even asking from where it comes. But even those who have faith in God struggle to imagine how God the creator of heaven and earth could become a child, completely dependent on one of his creatures for life. This mystery of God’s dependence on a woman to nurture him at her breast and then teach him, as good mothers do, how to be a loving and strong man is at the heart of Christian faith. Theologians call this mystery of God the Creator becoming a creature of the earth and taking on human nature including all the vulnerability of childhood the doctrine of “the Incarnation.” Saint John put it succinctly by saying simply: “[God] became flesh and dwelt among us” (Jn:1.14). That is the essential mystery at the genesis of our faith, a dogma we believe because God has revealed the truth of it.

        Next Saturday night on Christmas Eve and on the two Sundays following as well as on Epiphany, we’ll preach in depth on the doctrine of the Incarnation. But today we pause to ask, “What does this say about Mary? Who was she and why should we honor her?” We honor her because God came into the world through her. No one is born without a mother and Jesus was no exception to that law of nature. He would after death, following his glorious resurrection, ascend into heaven and return to his Father by his own volition and power (Acts:1.9). But to become one of us, God had to first be formed, as are we all, in his mother’s womb (Gal:4.4). Mary was the mother of God. She was not in the beginning with God. But she was the one God conceived from the beginning and then, at the time of his own choosing, formed in perfect holiness to be his mother. So as to exclude any confusion, the Council of Ephesus in A.D. 435 gave Mary the title of Theotokos, "Mother of God."

      Of all the people who have ever lived, apart from Jesus, Mary, having been given the highest honor by God, is deserving of the most honor from us. Mary is to the church, the visible kingdom of God on earth, as the Ark of the Covenant was to ancient Israel. The Ark of the Covenant was the gold plated box that God told Moses to construct in which Moses put the Ten Commandments (Ex:25; 34.28). The Ark literally held the words of God written by the finger of God on stone tablets. The Ark was, therefore, the most sacred and honored object in Israel. But sadly, because of Israel’s sins, God allowed Israel’s enemies to steal and destroy the ark. The story of Israel’s redemption begins with the restoration of the Ark of the Covenant. But a new covenant required a new ark. Mary is the new ark. The new ark, the sacred symbol of Israel’s redemption, would bear the Word of God not in a wooden box built by men but in her womb. The word in the ark of Mary’s womb was not placed there by a man.  God entered the ark of Mary’s womb by the Spirit after obtaining her permission (Lk:1.38). The word in Mary’s womb was not like the word in the first Ark; a dead letter carved in stone. The word in the ark of her womb was Jesus, the living Word of God come to his people in person (Jn.1.1–14). Mary is, therefore, greater than the Ark of the Old Covenant as a living soul is greater than a dead stone. And the word that issued from her womb is so much greater than words carved in stone as meeting an author in person and having him address you directly is greater than reading his book. But in this case, in the case of the gospel of man’s salvation, the author we meet is not just a man but is the one we call Emmanuel, God among us, God born of a woman, God born of Mary.

       My point today is simply this: as Christians, as children born again by grace into the New Covenant of faith, we cannot show too much honor or devotion or respect for Mary. We owe our salvation to her son. But our salvation depends in part on our imitating him (Eph:5.1). He was from the beginning dependent on her and up until age thirty when he left home to begin his ministry he was obedient to her (Lk:2.51). All of us who have been baptized have been united to Jesus Christ by grace. His life is implanted in our souls and so we are privileged to say with all the saints, “It is no longer I who live but Christ who lives in me” (Gal.2.20). Since Jesus lives in us by grace, his Father becomes our Father (Mt.6.9) and his mother becomes our mother (Jn: 19.24). It is a blessing to have parents who love you. What a wonderful gift God has given us in Mary. We have in Mary a mother who loves each of us as much as she loves her son Jesus.

        Mary so loved her son that she followed him all the way to the cross. And she, loving him who lives in you who have received him in baptism, will do the same for you. When you are on the cross, when you have nowhere else to turn, remember Mary who loves you as dearly as she loves him who is the life within you. Pray for her help, and you’ll find in Mary a mother who loves you more than words can express; a partner in prayer whose prayers—because they flow from a mother to her son—bear not the nature of a request but of a maternal command (Jn:2.3-7). Believe in Jesus and as she did, trust his Mother Mary. For in giving Jesus to the world she has given us the greatest gift of all, the gift of God’s love which is the blessing of Christmas to all who, with Jesus, honor His mother and ours, the Blessed Virgin Mary.

The Meaning of Life

A Meditation on Thanksgiving Day, 2016

      It’s always a surprise to clean the closets, especially closets that haven’t been cleaned in years. You never know what you’ll find hidden under layers of dust. I was surprised Monday at what I found in the church office. As our work crew dug through old boxes of envelopes and pencils and staplers of every size, I discovered a box of audio college courses. I knew immediately where they came from. Years ago I introduced Ray Griffin to an organization called the Teaching Company. The Teaching Company seeks out popular college professors and records their lectures. They then sell the recordings, making it possible for a wider audience beyond a university classroom to learn from the world’s best professors. I often listen to these lectures while driving to and from the church. My narrow interests are limited to New Testament studies and theology. But being a true Renaissance man, Ray had really gotten into this. He ordered multiple courses on a wide range of subjects, taking an interest in everything from the works of C.S. Lewis, to a history of the Bible, to Bach’s music, to Gothic Cathedrals, to Italian Renaissance art. Rummaging thru that dusty old box made me miss Ray. He was one of those guys of whom the saying holds true, “Still waters run deep”. He had a wide range of interests, and he clearly kept an interest in learning right up to the end of his life.

      The reason I mention this is not to promote the Teaching Company, although they do good work. I mention it because on Thanksgiving Day when we count our blessings, I count one of my blessings that I knew Ray. I miss him as all of us who loved him do. My larger point is this: as we count our blessings today, isn’t it really the people whom we love and those who have loved us for whom we are most thankful? Good food and the comforts of temporal prosperity are, like a wind, transient; but it’s the relationships with people, especially those who have been good to us, who have given to us from the treasure of their hearts kindness and generosity, gentleness and empathy, patience and understanding, who in the end mean everything to us. It’s our relationships that give our lives meaning. The better and more genuinely loving those relationships are, the more we feel that our life has meaning. In other words, when we count our blessings, it’s the spiritual gifts more than the material comforts that mean the most to us. And so we give thanks for those who have touched us on the level of spirit, who have connected with us not as consumers or as customers but as living souls, immortal beings who drink alike from the living water of divine grace. It is love received and given for which we are by nature most thankful because we are creatures made to give and receive love.

      But coming back to our brother Ray and that box of college courses that he bequeathed to us, there was one course that especially caught my attention. He had ordered a course of thirty lectures called simply enough: “The Meaning of Life.” Looking over the contents of the course, it sounded very interesting to me. It included lectures on the teachings of everyone from the Buddha and Aristotle, Confucius and Lao Tzu, to Tolstoy and Nietzsche. It was a kind of survey of world philosophy and religion, covering of a wide range of sages from all corners of the earth, exploring the teachings of those who have thought very deeply about the meaning of life. Who wouldn’t be interested in that?

       But the more I looked at it the more I realized that the most important name of all was absent from the list. Jesus Christ was not there. How can you discuss the meaning of life and leave out him whose miraculous life, prophetic death, and glorious resurrection incarnate and reveal that meaning? The very significance of calling Jesus the “Christ” is that he is the one in whom God has revealed the meaning of life. He was not simply another wisdom teacher, a cool dude who passed along to his devoted students a message of good counsel. He is the one in whom we encounter the wisdom God face to face. He is the meaning of life. To organize a course called “the meaning of life” and leave Jesus Christ out of it is like a doctor teaching his students heart surgery without showing them what a human heart is. The absence of any discussion of Jesus in that audio course reveals of the root cause of the decline of our culture. Ray should have asked for his money back.

         The phrase “the meaning of life” begs the question: does life have meaning? Does your life or mine life have purpose, worth, and transcendent value? Do we as individuals really count, or is our hope of glory just a fleeting dream, an invention of our vanity? This is the question that Darwin put front and center to the modern age. Is a human being just a random collocation of atoms? Are we freaks of nature who have just happened upon this earth, beings complex and wonderful but beings no more transcendent than algae on a pond’s surface? Or does the soul really exist and is that soul implanted in us by our Creator? Does human life lived in relationship to our Creator, therefore, serve a higher purpose?

       Christianity answers that question in the affirmative. Jesus Christ has revealed to us that life has transcendent meaning, because each one of us means everything to HIm. God, who cares for the sparrow that falls to the ground, cares for you and me even more. It’s our relationship to Him that makes all the difference between a life filled with meaning and an absurd existence spent groping in the dark waiting for Godot. 

     It is Thanksgiving Day; we have turkeys in the oven and relatives to greet; we are constrained to keep it short and sweet. So the point is simply this: we live in society of Christians who send their children off to institutions of higher learning and paying tens of thousands of dollars for the privilege of having them taught that life has no ultimate meaning other than whatever value or purpose you may choose to impose on it. Our colleges have become centers of mass confusion where faith is lost in a vortex of existentialist revolution that will embrace the wisdom of anyone and everyone other than the author of the gospel, who signed his eternal masterpiece in his own blood, shed on a cross. It’s the sad fact of modern life that in order to hold fast to the Christian faith we have to first unlearn and see through the indoctrination in secular humanism that we receive day in and day out from a culture that has reduced “the faith once and for all delivered to the saints” (Jude 3) to nothing more than a personal opinion held by a stubborn few.

        But the good news is this: God has revealed to us in Jesus Christ that we are more than the sum of our parts; we are living souls, creatures of God whom God loves and cares for deeply and we are in this world for one ultimate reason: to prove ourselves worthy of His love.

       Those Puritans of old sitting down to say grace before the feast hadn’t been to college but they knew about life. They understood that love of God and faith in the gospel is the key that unlocks the meaning of life. When we sit down with family and friends today let us count our blessings. And as we do let us count knowing Him, who in baptism united us to Himself, as first and last on that list. Life is never easy and the meaning of life is often elusive, but if we remember Jesus Christ, who on the night before he died took bread and gave thanks to God before giving it to his friends as a pledge of his transcendent love and a promise of salvation, our souls will bask in the light of the central truth that gives everlasting purpose and worth to human life. Jesus Christ is for us all the way: that is the one thing above all things for which those who are truly wise are eternally grateful.