Good Tidings of Great Joy

By the Rev. Dr. Paul S. Nancarrow

This sermon is based on Luke 2:(1-7)8-20
An audio version of this sermon is available here.

“Fear not: for, behold, I bring you good tidings of great joy, which shall be to all people. For unto you is born this day in the city of David a Saviour, which is Christ the Lord.”

We gather here tonight to hear again the old familiar story of the birth of Jesus in a stable in Bethlehem. We hear again of Mary and Joseph, the displaced couple, far from home, who had to stay in that stable because there was no room for them in the inn. We hear of the shepherds, staying out in the fields all night to look after their sheep, staying out working all night while the more prosperous, more comfortable people of Bethlehem were at home in their beds. And we hear about the angels, messengers from the Creator and Sustainer and Perfecter of all things, messengers who came to say to frightened and lonely people, “Do not be afraid: there is good news, there is great joy, there is a Savior for you and for everyone.”

We come here tonight to hear the Christmas message again — and perhaps this Christmas we are more ready, more willing, more eager to hear that message than on many Christmases past. This year, perhaps more than most, we are all really looking for some good news to celebrate.

Because for many of us it seems that we have had more than our share of bad news in the weeks and the months that we’ve been through. It isn’t just the lingering recession and the cloud of financial insecurity that seems to be hanging over the world, and over so many of us, and so many of the people we care about. It isn’t just the extreme polarization of opinions and positions that seems to characterize our public life these days, and the frustration a lot of us feel that our leaders care more about their political posturing than about coming to agreement on anything in order to get anything done. It isn’t just the feeling some have that the rich get richer and the poor get poorer, and that Wall Street is making a killing while Main Street has to struggle more and more. It isn’t just the steady tide of violence, organized and random, that we see over and over in our news media — student shootings and rogue states and sectarian violence and terrorist acts. It isn’t just the babble of overstimulated media and sensationalist news and the commercial overhyping of just about everything that makes our world seem a little crazier every day. It isn’t just the constant background of illness and failing health and sorrow and loss and death that so many of us have been living with, it seems, in these last few weeks and months. For many reasons, for many people, it seems as though there has been a lot of bad news lately. Maybe it even seems as though the good news of birth of Jesus can’t find a place to connect with this crazy, messy world we’ve come to know.

But consider for a moment the world that Jesus was born into, the world described in our Christmas Gospel stories. It was a world of vast inequalities in political and military power, where the ruling superpower of Rome insinuated its culture and its money and its language and its soldiers into all kinds of smaller and weaker peoples and nations. It was a world where those smaller and weaker nations often felt great resentment and resistance to the globalizing tendencies of Rome, and would sometimes respond with rebellions and insurrections and guerilla operations and surprise attacks of terror. The territory of Judea was notorious in Jesus’ time for its violent uprisings against Roman power. The world that Jesus was born into was a world of despotic and paranoid rulers, who often didn’t seem to hesitate to violate the lives of their people to further their own ambitions and agendas. Matthew’s Gospel records that Herod the Great ordered the extermination of the male children of a whole region in order to catch the one child whom prophecy said was the true heir to David’s throne. The world that Jesus was born into was a world of economic disparities, where a few amassed great wealth while many were kept in enforced poverty; it was a world of racial and ethnic hatreds, where Galileans and Judeans and Jews and Samaritans and Greeks and Romans and Scythians and barbarians all watched each other with suspicion; it was a world where you could be ordered to leave your home and go somewhere else to be counted for a census to raise the tax rates; it was a world where non-citizens could be tried by a secret military tribunal and summarily executed for crimes against the state; it was a world where terror and warfare and danger and death were everyday occurrences in everyday life

The world that Jesus was born into was not so very different from the world we’ve been living in these weeks and months and years. It wasn’t some ideal realm of peace and goodwill and the sound of angel song — but it was a world so broken and so hurting that it longed to hear the words: “Do not be afraid: there is good news, there is great joy, there is a Savior for you and for everyone.”

And that is the message that our world longs to hear tonight, too. That is the message that is proclaimed to us in this Christmas Gospel. That is the message that we are commissioned to proclaim to the entire world.

Because the good news of the birth of Christ is not just a memory of something that happened far away and long ago. The good news is that Christ is borne in us, and that we are reborn in Christ, here and now, in this life and in this world, in the midst of all the crazy messy busy scary realities that make up our day-to-day lives. The good news is that Jesus is our Savior, because in Jesus God has entered into our human life; in Jesus God has taken up the whole crazy messy busy scary business of being human and has given it a new horizon of meaning; in Jesus God has focused all the rays of divine love, the way a magnifying glass focuses light, so that the light of love can be kindled in our hearts too; in Jesus God has come to be one of us, so that in Jesus we might come to be one with God.

And that is good news, that is great joy, that is our salvation — because it means that our lives and our labors, our hopes and our dreams, our joys and our sorrows, our passions and our loves, are not limited, are not controlled, are not held down by all the bad news we’ve been living through. It means that for us, too, our lives can have a wider horizon of meaning than the horizon set by fear and anxiety and terror. It means that we can be good news, when in the Name of Jesus we feed the hungry, and house the homeless, and comfort the afflicted, and encourage the faint-hearted, and stand for justice, make the peace, and in all things point beyond ourselves to the Goodness at the heart of all reality — because that is what Jesus was born to do, and what we bear the Spirit of Jesus in us to do again today.

And that is what we celebrate here tonight. On this Christmas Eve 2011, it is our joy, it is our salvation, it is our mission, to hear and to proclaim again the words of the angel at the birth of Jesus: “Do not be afraid, for I am bringing you good news of great joy for all people: for you there is this day a Savior, who is the Messiah, the Lord, the Son of God, Jesus Christ.”

Amen.

A Mansion Prepared

by the Rev. Dr. Paul S. Nancarrow

This sermon is based on 2 Samuel 7:1-11, 16 and Luke 1: 26-38.
An audio version of this sermon is available here.

“We beseech thee, Almighty God,” we pray in our collect today, “to purify our consciences by thy daily visitation, that when thy Son Jesus Christ cometh he may find in us a mansion prepared for himself.”

What does it mean to prepare a mansion, to prepare a dwelling place, for God? That question runs all through our scripture readings for this Fourth Sunday of Advent, this Sunday almost on the cusp of Christmas Day.

David wanted to build a dwelling place for God, as we hear in our reading from 2 Samuel this morning. David wanted to build a splendid temple for God, something that would really show off David’s power and prestige as king. That was kind of standard operating procedure for Middle Eastern kings in David’s time: first you consolidated your territories, then you subdued your enemies, then you built yourself a magnificent palace, then you erected a temple to your god to impress on everyone just how important you were and how powerful you were and how divine authority was on your side to do whatever you wanted. When David was settled in his house, and had rest from all his enemies, and wanted to prove that he really was the king, the next thing to do was to build a temple for God to dwell in, to show everyone how much God favored him.

But God had different ideas about where to dwell. God sent the prophet Nathan to tell David that God didn’t actually need a house, that God was always free to move about among peoples and places, and God was not about to be pinned down to a temple of splendor as a sign of David’s divine favor. Instead of dwelling in a house made by hands, where God really wanted to dwell was in the house of David, in David’s dynasty, in the lineage of Davidic kings who would lead God’s people, and shepherd God’s people, and establish God’s people in righteousness and justice, who would be God’s instrument for bringing peace and wholeness and well-being to all people. The house, the dwelling place, the mansion God wanted was David’s heart, and the hearts of all those who would come after David. For David, preparing a dwelling place for God meant accepting the covenant God chose to make with him.

Preparing a dwelling place for God takes on an even deeper meaning in our Gospel reading today, in Luke’s account of the Annunciation to Mary. The angel Gabriel comes to a young girl in a small town in the backwater region of Galilee to tell her that she, she, will conceive and bear the heir to David’s throne, the one who will open the way to the kingdom of never-ending justice and peace, the one who will be God’s Son, God’s human dwelling place, in the world. Astonished and perplexed by this world-changing news, Mary asks a very prudent question — “How can this be?” — and the angel answers that she will be overshadowed by the Holy Spirit, she herself, her very body, will be a dwelling place for divine presence, she herself will be the mansion where the holy child will grow and form and be prepared to come into the world. Mary’s simple answer, “Here am I, the servant of the Lord; let it be with me according to your word,” is a perfect example of human self-offering in response to God’s self-offering in love. For Mary, preparing a dwelling place for God meant trusting that nothing will be impossible with God, and therefore opening herself to the new life God has chosen to place in her.

Preparing a dwelling place by accepting the covenant. Preparing a dwelling place by self-offering for new life. According to our collect, preparing a dwelling place for God happens when God purifies our consciences. “Conscience” is a word that means more than we usually give it credit for. Conscience is more than that little voice that tells you when you’ve done something bad; the word “conscience” comes from roots that literally mean “knowing with”; so conscience in its root sense means a kind of knowledge that is intimate and intense and more meaningful than ordinary information. Conscience is more than objective external data about something; conscience is sharing in the truth of a thing, knowing something so well that it becomes a part of you and you become a part of it. For God to purify our consciences means that God cleans away all the things that get in the way of our knowing God so deeply and so inwardly and so well that God becomes a part of us and we become a part of God. For God to purify our consciences means that God prepares in us the knowledge of Christ, a dwelling place for Christ, a mansion in our deepest hearts where the life of Christ can be formed. Just as David knew God when God offered to make him a house, just as Mary knew God when God offered to make her the mother of his Son, so we know God when God offers to us a purified conscience, an intimate knowing, to be the dwelling place of Christ in us.

And that happens, our collect tells us, by God’s “daily visitation.” The purified conscience is not something we must accomplish on our own before God will deign to come to us, but it is something that God accomplishes with us precisely by coming to us. The daily time we spend in prayer and meditation and contemplation with God is the very way God forms in us the pure conscience, the inward knowing, the heart’s mansion where Christ can live.

And that’s a timely reminder for us today. Christmas is a week away — and for a lot of us that means things are going to get busier and busier with each passing day. There will be visits, and family, and travel, and parties before Christmas, and parties after Christmas, and big dinners, and shopping, and presents, and before you know it will be New Year’s Eve, and then where will the year have gone? It will be easy to get caught up in the whirlwind of it all in the next few days, and while that can be joyous it can also be exhausting, and in some ways it can distract us from the truth of Christ born into the world that is at the heart of it all. Daily prayer, daily visitation with God, will purify our conscience, it will clarify our knowing, it will deepen our sharing with Christ alive in us — so that even in a busy time of year we may be more and more the embodiment of Christ’s hands to serve, and Christ’s feet to go, and Christ’s mouth to speak Good News, and Christ’s heart to love all those who need love most. It was to embody all those things that Jesus was formed in Mary’s womb and born in Bethlehem; it is to embody all those things in us that Jesus forms a mansion in our hearts today.

So I invite you this week, as everything ramps up for The Big Event: Take time each day to pray, spend time each day with God’s visitation, let God’s grace purify your inward knowing and form in you a place for Christ to dwell. And your Christmas celebration will be not just for Jesus’ birth, but for your own rebirth in Jesus’ Name. Amen.

Let There Be Light

John 1: 6-8, 19-28

Jim Gilman

Introduction

            So, “there was a man sent from God whose name was John,” says our gospel lesson. “He came as a witness to testify to the light…. He himself was not the light, but he came to testify to the light.”  Perhaps the most important comment of this entire Gospel passage is when it says:  John himself was not the light, but he came to testify to the light; he came to be a witness to the light. In fact, during the time of John & Jesus there were some prophets claiming to be the light; Jesus made such a claim. But John did not; he knew who he was and who he was to be.

            Check out the stained glass windows this morning. What’s your favorite one? Mine is….. Without the sun shining light through them, the windows can be somewhat dull and dim looking; not what they could and should be. They are menat to have light shining through them. When it does, they are brilliant, spectacular.

That’s pretty much the sermon today: that we should like John, let the light of the Lord shine through us and not on us. We are meant to be like stained glass windows, transparent, letting the light of the Lord shine through us. If we don’t then we are rather dull and dim Christians. John’s greatness is that he did not mistake himself for the light, as some do; rather, he was transparent to the light; he was willing to let the light of God shine through him--through his words, voice, actions, and life. His message of repentance and forgiveness was like light bursting through a stained glass window, brilliant and spectacular.

Transparent

            Question: How do we k now when we are transparent and not opaque to God’s light?How do we know when the light of the Lord shines through us and not on us? Or, as our lesson from Isaiah says it, how do we know when the spirit of the Lord is upon us??

            Isaiah’s answer is straightforward: The spirit of the Lord is upon us, the light of the Lord shines through us, when we: bring good news to the poor, bind up the broken hearted, proclaim liberty to the captive, release to the prisoner; when we proclaim the year of the Lord’s facor and the day of God’s vengeance; when we comfort those who more. This is how we know that the spirit and l;ight of the Lord shines through us, when by God’s grace we are empowered to do these things. In fact, you may know that when Jesus began his ministry he claimed these words of Isaiah as his own: as if to say this is my spirit, this is my good news; as if to say, this is my light that is to shine through you as if through stained glass. When we are transparent, in other words, we are empowered to do all these things that Isaiah and Jesus mention; when we are transparent we practice what we preach; we are willing to sacrifice something of ourselves for the welfare of others.

Opaque

            How is it, then, that we Christians often are opaque instead of transparent? How and why is it that sometimes we absorb light instead of transmitting it to others?

            Preparing this sermon compelled me to self-examination; to consider the ways in which I tend to absorb the light of Christ instead of transmitting it? All of the ways I thought of condensed into a single word: EXCUSES! What is my, what is your excuse for being opaque?

            *too busy, or afraind of being too busy;

            *already overcommitted; To what??

            *don’t know what my gifts are;

            *don’t know where my gifts fit in at Trinity;

            *Too little energy; too tired all the time; Too lazy??

            *Failure of nerve, afraid of what transparency will demand of me?

Excuses are light black holes! The light of Christ may enter our hearts, but excuses keep it from shining through us to the benefit of others. For example, think of the ways you receive the light of Christ here at Trinity: worship, music, Sunday school, youth events, bible studies, holy communion, social events. How many of us absorb the light of these good things, but fail to pass that light on; fail to transmit it to others?

Let Light Shine

            The good news Isaiah talks about is the same as the good news that John testifies to. The light that shone through John was the gospel of repentance and forgiveness and baptism.. Ask yourself, How can I be transparent? How can I testify to the light of Christ? How can let the light of Christ shine through my life this week?

            The opportunities are endless, really. Isaiah says we are to:

1.      Bring good news to the oppressed: There are plenty of opportunities for justice, for bringing good news to the oppressed here in the Valley;

*there are many organizations that work to protect the rights and liberties of the vulnerable:

*the Augusta Center for Peace and Justice, for example; NAACP, New Directions, and many other organizations.           

*We can help those who are bullied at school, those who are excluded, kids who are abused or neglected; elderly who are abused or neglected;

*those who suffer domestic abuse and violence; The poor, needy; those without decent housing;

*those who have no power or voice to claim their rights.

For all of these the light of Christ is justice and freedom.

2.      Bind up the heartbroken: There are sooo many people in our community who are heartbroken, who need healing and comfort:

*there are those who grieve the death of a loved one need comfort; those who are divorcing, who suffer illnesses; those who are ostracized;

*all who are lonely; who have no one special to be with, no one who takes the time and energy to pay attention to them, to make them feel worth the air they breathe; those who eat alone at work or feel isolated and abandoned in their homes at night, with no one to call them to say they care.

For them the light of Christ is comfort and care and friendship.

3.      Proclaim liberty to the captives and release to the prisoners:

*There are of course opportunities to work for the release of political prisoners and those falsely imprisoned in our own criminal justice system.

*But there is another prison in which many are trapped: the prison of addiction to alcohol, prescription drugs, to food and pornography and TV and sports;

*there are those imprisoned in the solitude of their own egos, who are so imprisoned by their own self- interests that they cannot meet the needs of those in their own household.

*There are those who are trapped by feelings of guilt, that a word of forgiveness or mercy would heal;

For them the light of Christ is liberty and freedom.

Conclusion

To be transparent like John, to be light to those in need is, according to Isaiah, like giving *a garland instead of ashes; *the mantle of praise instead of a faint spirit.” Indeed, those who are transparent to the light will be called “Oaks of Righteousness, the planting of the Lord.” It is light and good news that Isaiah says will “build up the ancient ruins,” “raise up the former devastations,” and “repair the ruined cities” of our lives. 

            This is John’s message to us. Like John we are not the light but are to be transparent to the the light, so that all might believe; so that the way of the Lord is made straight.                                                                                                                

God Prepares a Way

by the Rev. Dr. Paul S. Nancarrow

This sermon is based on Isaiah 40:1-11

An audio version of this sermon is available here.

“Prepare the way of the Lord!” That imperative, that command, rings through all our scripture readings for today, this Second Sunday of Advent. We Christians are perhaps most familiar with that imperative as proclaimed by John the Baptist, preparing the way for the public ministry of Jesus. But the image of a Way prepared for God is far older and far broader than just John the Baptist — and when we look closely at some of those other versions of the image, what we see is not just how we prepare a way for God, but how God prepares a way for us, how God is at work in the world to open for us the way to become more alive, more compassionate, more just, more peaceable, more like the fully realized people God gives us the potential to be. Advent is our season for witnessing how God prepares the way for our fulfillment, both now in this mortal life, and in the greater life that is yet to come.

How God prepares the way for us is the theme of our scripture readings today. And what these readings tell us is that the Way God prepares is not always easy, it’s not always gentle and quiet and free of risk; but God’s way is trustworthy, and God’s way is sure, and God’s way will lead to a reality where righteousness is at home.

That message really comes through in our First Testament lesson today, this passage from the 40^th chapter of Isaiah. Isaiah Chapter 40 is the point at which the whole book of Isaiah turns, it shifts its direction suddenly from being a dire warning to the people that they must turn from their wickedness and follow God before God’s punishment falls upon them, and suddenly becomes a book of comfort, a series of prophecies that promise God’s consolation for the people, God’s restoration of the people. God promises to build a Way, a highway in the desert, that will bring the Jewish people back from their exile in Babylon to their home in Jerusalem, a Way that will bring all people back from their estrangement from God to their home in God’s love. A voice cries out to the heavenly powers: “In the wilderness prepare the way of the Lord, make straight in the desert a highway for our God.” And on that divinely built highway, God himself “will gather the lambs in his arms, and carry them in his bosom, and gently lead the mother sheep.”

The imagery of God’s Way in the desert is very familiar to us — perhaps even too familiar. It is so familiar to us that I think sometimes we miss the disturbing, the shocking dimension in these words. “Every valley shall be lifted up, and every mountain and hill be made low,” the prophet says, “the uneven ground shall become level, and the rough places a plain.” Think for a moment about what those words really mean, not just the beauty they lend to Handel’s Messiah, but the concrete scene they describe: mountains shaking to their very roots, falling down to become flat ground; valleys heaving up in monstrous earthquakes to become level with the plain. It’s a pretty frightening set of images. We had a small earthquake here in Virginia last summer — you can still see the cracks it left in the patio behind the rectory — and that little temblor was scary enough. Imagine if you looked up one day and saw the Blue Ridge mountains shaking, sliding, tumbling down to become level ground; imagine if our whole Shenandoah Valley were suddenly heaved up to make an even plain; imagine if Highway 250, winding its way through valley and ridgetop, were suddenly made straight and even and level and unimpeded. I’d be pretty scared if I saw all that happening. Isaiah describes a fearsome upheaval in the natural order of things, a terrifying disruption in the way-things-are, when God prepares a Way to bring his people home.

And even if we take the images strictly metaphorically, they still describe a terrible disruption in the lives of the people the prophet is addressing: many of the Jews of Second Isaiah’s time had grown comfortable in Babylon: some had risen to high positions in the Babylonian government, many had grown wealthy in Babylonian commerce. Going back to Judea to rebuild a ruined Jerusalem would have been a pretty scary prospect to many of them, as scary as watching mountains tumble and valleys rise.

But the meaning of these images, Isaiah says, is not fear or terror; the meaning is comfort, the meaning is consolation, the meaning is strengthening the people to put their trust in God and do the work God has given them to do. The prophet’s vision is that upheavals and disruptions and dislocations in our comfortable and settled lives can be God’s very way of preparing the path that will lead us to greater life. And the prophet’s message is that if we will trust in God’s way, if we will put our feet on God’s highway in the wilderness, then we too can be gathered into a City of Peace, where the glory of God shall be revealed, and all people shall see it together. The Way that God prepares is not always easy, but the Way of God will lead us to larger life.

And that is how we can come to know God’s Way with us, too. We may not be looking for a return from exile, as Isaiah’s people were; but we do know what it is like to live in a world of upheaval, we do know what it is like to experience disruptions and dislocations in our lives — and we too are called to let God shake us out of our comfortable, complacent routines and lead us on the highway through the desert to a larger way of life.

A friendship is damaged by betrayal or anger; but that dislocation also opens the opportunity for reconciliation, and a deeper commitment, and a friendship that is stronger in the long run.

A family is disrupted by alcoholism or addiction; but the pain of intervening in addictive behaviors becomes the way into recovery, the way to greater freedom and more genuine love for everyone in the family system.

An individual comes to a time of illness or loss or sadness or grief, when a whole entire life seems turned upside down; but that dislocation and disruption become the way of discovering a new sense of self, a new way of life, a new height of faith, a new depth of love.

A church finds its customs and habits challenged by changing patterns of participation, and shifting expectations of membership, and an increasing percentage of the general population who say that church and religion don’t really mean much of anything to them anyway; but facing those challenges opens a way for that church to move beyond “We’ve always done it that way,” and to become more intentional about the practices of its faith, and the centrality of prayer, and its mission to be Jesus for the world.

We know what it is like to live in a world of upheaval, to live lives touched by disruption and dislocation — so to us as well these scriptures speak, and promise that in the wilderness God prepares a Way, in the deserts and wastes and scary places of our lives, God makes the pathway straight; when everything around us seems to be dissolving and withering away, God is preparing the new possibility that will bring us into a larger life. For us, too, the message is that we may put our trust in God and do the work God gives us to do, we may strive to live lives of holiness and godliness now, looking ahead to when the fullness of grace will be revealed. For us, too, the message is “Comfort, comfort my people, says your God — because in your wilderness, too, the Way of the Lord is being prepared.” And that is the spirit of Advent we are invited to receive and embrace and live this day.