Sermon Notes Dec. 18 Mt. 1, Rom.1

Dec. 18-Is. 7, Rom.1  Mt. 1:18-25

When I was a boy in Catholic school the pictures of Joseph were of someone who looked like a great grandfather next to the young Mary. Later, of course, it became obvious: the pictures were designed to remove suspicion about the biology of Jesus. In the account of Matthew Joseph(may he increase)  cannot accept Mary’s pregnancy, so he resolves to divorce her quietly instead of having her taken to a religious trial and possibly receive capital punishment.Joseph gets neglected. His namesake interpreted dreams.. Joseph receives one and acts on it.

We are in the middle of a fearful king looking for a sign to strengthen his resolve against attack.will God be with the people or not?(see Ps. 46) The child will choose the good at an early age, perhaps as a sign of being special in understanding as in Is. 11 from 2 weeks ago.Our Bible translates the Is passage properly, as a young woman. The Greek translation made a possibility into more of  a certainty, a virgin of marriageable age. A little more than a century ago the Presbyterian church insisted on five fundamental Christian precepts, and virgin birth was one of them. A few generations ago, it was said that when ministers went through their trials of ordination, they would respond that they agreed with Paul on the virgin birth; Paul never mentioned it of course, as you can tell from our Romans reading.. The mistake we have made is that we act as if the virgin birth is the end of inquiry instead of its beginning. Karl Barth warned that we ignore the doctrine to our peril.It is the sign of the Incarnation. God works through human beings but also breaks out of the way things are if need be.Youth v. age in OT. we have births that are a surprise due to old age-this may be one due to youth.Kings were called the offspring of god, but this king is born to the poor.this king is related to god in an especially deep, ontic way.Is. 7 lin kings 16 and child sacrifice. In the ancient world, special people were thought to be part of divine human intercourse, but at times, they too spoke of the power of God operating on a different plane.

All smoke and mirrors ?not be believed and established  taaminu- teamenu Now to 10-16 is ahaz right not to ask for a sign? A little kid will prove God is with us see Ps 46 mother names well ends in ambiguity-

Joseph had to come to grips with an astonishment..One of the reasons the word comes to Matthew in a dream is that what rational faculty could deal with the message? It is a vehicle for coming to grips with an astonishing claim. In Jesus  divinity and humanity exist together the name Jesus, means god saves/helps/delivers. It is Joshua to us. The Joshua a priest, and of course the great leader into the Promised Land.

Matthew is concerned with the divine pedigree of Jesus, but also the divine purpose for the birth of Jesus. I want to spend more time on Emmanuel, God with us, than the mechanism of the conception of Jesus..Not against us, with us. Not separate from us, with us. Not away from us, with us.2 names Jesus and Emmanuel. -fascinated by tracing the Jesse tree, and traces a set of ancestors all the way back to the founding partriarch Abraham.some of the people are famous; most are not. Some are women, and most of them were foreign women, or had connection with outsiders. Emmanuel is one of us.

Sermon Notes for Dec. 11 Lk. 1, Is. 35

I hate waiting passively, so I bring a book. John Mayer had a song waiting on the world to change.Is. 35, again goes to the opposite of what will happen to the enemies New exodus=-return-utter change/reversal, topsy turvy-alton riverfront changed-no grass in the sidewalks-take a look more closely at all of the reversals   Is. 35 Counters to the destruction of enemies in 34. cultic liturgical procession route or the transportation imagined, not the route of conquest.

Reversal abound. Announces end of judgment

As Walter Brueggemann has reminded us, “Israel’s doxologies are characteristically against the data.” We see and hear the data every night on the news . Add to that the data of our own lives: waiting for the test results from the doctor, mourning the death of a loved one, wondering if we’ll make it through the next round of layoffs.

Wilderness (midbar) has multiple contacts for Israel. It is a place of flight and of freedom (Genesis 16, 21; Exodus 3, 13), populated by deadly animals (Deuteronomy 8:15). Water is scarce (Exodus 15, 17),. It is dangerous (Exodus 14:3). . it is easy to get lost (Num 32; Psalm 107:4). Yet, Wilderness is where God's people learn to become a people. In wilderness God carried them (Deut 1:31), fed them (Exodus 16), and gave them improbable water (Exodus 17). In wilderness God found God's people, guarded and cared for them, and lifted them up (Deuteronomy 32).

When God empties the rich of their excess and fills the hungry with good things, the result is not social reversal -- with the powerless and the powerful changing places -- as much as it is social leveling. Thus God provides for the poor and honors the humiliated. When the arrogant are scattered and the powerful brought down, then every person has access to enough, and no one has too much.(Judith Jones) Every person is treated with dignity and respect, and no one uses power to harm.

-Mary sings about the God who saves not just souls, but actual living people.  God is not content  to point people toward heaven; God’s redemptive work begins here on earth. God fills the hungry not only with hope, but with food. Rather than being satisfied with comforting the lowly, Mary’s Lord lifts them up, granting them dignity and honor, a seat at the table and a voice . At the same time, God shows strength by disrupting the world’s power structures, dethroning the powerful. Jacobsen- songs are powerful-, know that when we gather together and sing to God, the hope and consolation of Israel and the world, are represented. We, like Mary, are swept into God's divine activity to save and redeem that world. A few voices drawn together in song in late December may seem a small thing in the face of the wars and worries of the age, but surely no smaller than those voices joined in Leipzig twenty years ago or those two voices joined in the Judean hill country twenty centuries ago. Mary's God, we should remember, delights in taking what is small and insignificant in the eyes of the world to do extraordinary and unexpected things. So it has been, is, and ever shall be "according to the promise God made to our ancestors, to Abraham and to his descendants forever."

James 5:7(patience) patient endurance or keeping at it. Is that the best you’ve got? Job clearly not patient but he never, ever gives up on his prayers of lament to god.  Mt. 11:2-11 Announcement of new age and the baptist-look at the Jesus program-He is clearly his mother’s son.Jesus is also immersed in Scriptural passages such as Is. 35.

Column on Local Santa

Every year, a team of dedicated volunteers makes Rock springs Park a festival of lights. Every year volunteers organize the procession through the park and  operate a Santa House. They then get a share of the proceeds toward their civic organizations.

I know one of the Santa team personally, and he catalogs events, but he also won’t let accuracy get in the way of good stories. A smart Santa covers his red trousers with a thick red towel, so that the Christmas sound of squish does not get uncomfortable in a drafty Santa House. This is important as Santa’s pants have a way of sliding off if he stands up to dance to Jingle bells.

The children are offered a candy cane, and many of them want to share them with the entire group with them. Older children are uncertain if they even want to be there, but Santa tells them this is an elaborate way to get a family picture, and those are very important to people. They will look back on them when they are older, even as it is a terrible chore right now.

The children seem little impressed with the lights as they drive. Santa can’t believe how late some little children stay up, especially as Santa is usually in bed by 9. Recently a one year old took his first steps, not to parents, but to Santa. Pictures can be an issue, as most small children are afraid of Santa. Sometimes Santa sings to them, but that can often make it worse, if the child is at all musical. Santa gets used as a discipline delivery device, as parent swill threaten the child with sleigh bell retribution if the child has been misbehaving, but Santa has never, ever, heard a parent say that they  deserve special favor since the child has been especially good.

Santa has to be careful not to promise what cannot be delivered. Santa has heard too many tales of ill relatives. A young girl spoke of Grandma in the hospital. Santa won’t promise her to be home for Christmas, but will pray with the child there and then for Grandma to find restoration through hands greater than those found on the North Pole.

Santa says Merry Christmas, ho, ho, ho, but if someone says Happy Holidays, Santa is always gracious and wishes them the same in return. Of course Santa knows that holiday comes from the words holy days. Santa has no patience with those who imagine a war on Christmas for their ideological agenda, and Santa appreciates that people try to be polite to a variety of religious beliefs and disbeliefs. After all, people complained about Santa as part of the imagined war on Christmas pushing Christ out of Christmas not that long ago. One of Santa’s favorite Christmas songs is Happy Holidays, after all.

It breaks Santa’s heart to hear tales of need and poverty at any time of year, but especially this season. Too many times, Santa has been asked to get a parent out of jail in time for Christmas. Santa tells the older ones to write letters and to make drawings or crafts as they miss their parent. We have turned Christmas into such a family holiday that the whole season feels broken when someone is absent. Santa has a hard time holding back tears when a child tells him that Grandma doesn’t know who she is anymore. Santa has heard too many children ask if Grandpa can see them at Christmas, as Grandpa is in heaven.

For many of us, Santa embodies the Christmas spirit. It is one of jollity and utter generosity. May you rediscover the spirit of Santa and Christmas this season.

Points for week of Dec. 11

Sunday-Ps. 146:5-10 links God the Creator to God the liberator. It is a shorthand for Hebrew ethics. The stability of creation  seems to flow into a stable form of social action.What would a prayer for justice look like for you in 2016?

Monday-"The second-century bishop and theologian St. Irenaeus wrote that the true pilgrim was to live life in a state of ‘apavia’, a Latin word which means “roadlessness.” He called for a posture of deep trust in the leading of the Spirit, rather than human direction. In essence, he taught that the place where we don’t know where we’re going is also the place of greatest richness.".--- Christine Valters Paintner

Tuesday-"God loves human beings. God loves the world. Not an ideal human, but human beings AS THEY ARE; not an ideal world, but the REAL WORLD. ...this is for God the ground of unfathomable love. God establishes a most intimate unity with this. God becomes human, a real human being. While we exert ourselves to grow beyond our humanity, to leave the human behind us, GOD BECOMES HUMAN; and we must recognize that God wills that we be human, real human beings. While we distinguish between pious and godless, good and evil, noble and base, God loves REAL PEOPLE without distinction.

Wednesday-"But it is not enough to say that God embraces human beings. This affirmation rests on an infinitely deeper one, a sentence with a more impenetrable meaning, that God in the conception and birth of Jesus Christ has taken on humanity BODILY. God overrules every reproach of untruth, doubt and uncertainty raised against God's love by entering as a human being into human life, by taking on and bearing bodily the nature, essence, guilt, and suffering of human beings. God becomes human out of love for humanity. God does not seek the most perfect human being with whom to be united, but takes on human nature AS IT IS. Jesus is not the transfiguration of noble humanity but the Yes of God to real human beings, nor the dispassionate Yes of a judge but the merciful Yes of a compassionate sufferer. In this Yes all of the life and all the hope of the world are comprised. —Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Ethics, 84-85

Thursday-"We're standing the middle of an awesome mystery - life itself! - and the only appropriate response before this mystery is humility. If we're resolved that this is where we want to go - into the mystery, not to hold God and reality but to let God and reality hold us - then I think religion is finally in its proper and appropriate place" (73). Rohr

Friday-"If the doors of perception were cleansed, everything would appear as it is, infinite." -William Blake

Saturday-"Socrates had it wrong; it is not the unexamined but finally the uncommitted life that is not worth living. Descartes too was mistaken; 'Cognito ergo sum' -- 'I think therefore I am'? Nonsense. 'Amo ergo sum' -- 'I love therefore I am.' Or, as with unconscious eloquence St. Paul wrote, 'Now faith, hope, love, these three; and the greatest of these is love.' I believe that. I believe it is better not to live than not to love." (William Sloane Coffin)

Column on Shoes for the Needy

For the first time in fifty years, the majority of American school children come from low-income homes. It infuriates me that the United States of America has a poverty rate so high that the International Monetary fund made suggestions for our economy that sounded as if we were part of the developing world.  In Alton, fairly recent data indicated that around 60% of students are in need by using the school lunch criterion.

This past week I was at the mall early, as I tried to avoid being run down by hordes of morning walkers. A group of people gathered at Famous Footwear. No, they were not part of the Al Bundy Fan Club. There, volunteers from Rotary, the police, and other service groups were there to help 2 sets of children pick out a pair of shoes. Bell Telephone employees bought shoes for children in the late sixties, when utility workers noticed children heading home without shoes. Atlantis Pools has kept up the program. All God’s Children Shall Have Shoes is a charitable organization that gathers support for this program. Last year almost one thousand area children received shoes.

One boy asked for Nike shoes. He then asked me if old people knew about Nike shoes. I told him that I asked people who wore Nike shoes to get off my lawn. Patiently, people helped children select and check if the shoes fit well. Then, the children received a batch of socks from gracious employees. A truly kindly man gave cookies to the kids as they filed out to wait with their teachers, as the students clutched their bags.

My mother was a Depression era child and teen, and I heard stories of children wearing two different shoes and two left shoes to school. Cardboard helped keep shoes going if the uppers were still good. Sometimes one flopped about in shoes several sizes too big, and the children were told: it’s for your growth. When I was growing up, children were often told to wrap plastic bags around their feet to “waterproof” their shoes. I suppose a lack of proper footwear is a symbol of poverty in my mind.

Charity ennobles the giver, but it rarely gives a sense of respect to the receiver. I am thrilled when basic human needs are met. I hate that we are creating a generation of young people too dependent on spasms of charity to make it through.

At this time of year, I often read Christmas stories. I always go back to Christmas Carol by Dickens and the movies based on that work. Scrooge would fit well in 2016. He is consumed by the accumulation of money. He blames the poor for their plight and does not want to enable their stress on scarce resources. A series of visions gives him a new perspective on his past, the present of the family of his abused employee, and a dim view of his future. He is transformed and gives from a “glad and generous heart.” So many Christmas stories use poverty as a template and then some sort of surprise gift that lightens the burden of a family.

We all have big shoes to fill. We need an economy in this area that will not consign so many children to poverty. We bring children into the world who are guaranteed to be vulnerable to deprivation in too many ways. This season melts the coldest of hearts and opens th3e tightest of fists to give to those in need. For our community the great Christmas gift would be a concerted effort at expanding and creating job opportunities in any sector that could provide stable employment opportunity. In the meantime, may Christmas be a bit easier for all those struggling under terrible burdens, as we offer helping hands.

Sermon Notes-Advent 2 Rom. 15, Is. 11

I would like to seize on the word, welcome. You are a welcome presence-we want you to feel welcome. Is. 11-gifts of the spirit here- (we attribute to baptism) worldwide hope for peace-look at the tools of this messianic figure-3 pairs of gifts-all related to the wisdom figure of Prov. In the previous chapters trees have been felled as the result of a conquering army, out of that stump, that remnant will come a leader, an antithesis of the boastful Assyrian of chapter 10.Justice, dispassionate justice will be a mark-V. 3 probably means dispassionate disinterested who looks beyond appearance and hearsay better standards

. Is.11- trees from 10 Assyria may stay down but Judah will rise  a cutting?  Lo a rose- --rod virga in Latin -the Hebrew word for "shoot" (11:1) can also mean "rod" or "scepter." Virtues in paris Assyrian boast of 10:13 counsel and might could be strategy and strength spirit given

. Who trusted God was love indeed And love Creation's final law-    Tho' Nature, red in tooth and claw/    With ravine,2 shriek'd against his creed (Tennyson) -Peaceable kingdom again-Rod shifts to verbal rod or standards the wolf passage is precisely against the predatory role in 9 and 10. v. 10 magnetic image  root of Jesse changed in LXX it is a signal -11:10 as christ’s tomb .

Rom. 15:4-13 Welcome (accept, embrace, get hold of take their hand, make a companion)one another-not division but harmony-not polarization We ar ein the holiday time of hospitality, of making people feel welcome.

Romans 15 accept/welcome inclusivity as Christ has welcomed you. How does Christ welcome us? Opens arms for  Zaccheus-the open arms of a cross, the holiday gathering of communion.

Build up This advent of Christ, can never be claimed as a privilege by one group. Rather, everyone is invited, those who are inside and those who are not, into song!. The goal but also the witness of living together in harmony, of welcoming one another, is communal song!  Psalm 72, appointed for this Sunday, picks up on this theme. The psalmist prays for the king of justice, for the righteous one to come, whose kingdom will bring justice to all, who is like life-giving showers, covering the earth and whose peace will abound until the end of time. Again, the vision and hope is broad, communal and all-encompassing.

As the community is invited into this praise so it is invited into this radical welcome. Christ has become the "servant" (verse 8) of one community but only to make this community's praise a praise that opens up windows and doors. in order that the promises given to the patriarchs, the promises given to all (like stars in the heaven) might be fulfilled. We might say that the vocation of this circumcised community is precisely to now be a servant to all people.

We have here a version of Luther's happy exchange: Christ takes upon himself everything that separates us from God and in return gives us all Christ's benefits, as we welcome the neighbor and as we are welcomed, as we live in harmony with one another in accordance with Jesus Christ Dirk G. Lange |

Jesse Trees-visual way of drawing our Isaiah passage to Jesus directly. It  follows the lineage of jesus from Jesse to David through the centuries. Others link prophecies to the birth of Jesus. God welcomes the  history of his people, history of a family, into the very life of jesus. "God loves human beings. God loves the world. Not an ideal human, but human beings AS THEY ARE; not an ideal world, but the REAL WORLD. ...this is for God the ground of unfathomable love. God establishes a most intimate unity with this. God becomes human, a real human being. While we exert ourselves to grow beyond our humanity, to leave the human behind us, GOD BECOMES HUMAN; and we must recognize that God wills that we be human, real human beings. While we distinguish between pious and godless, good and evil, noble and base, God loves REAL PEOPLE without distinction. (Bonhoeffer)

Devotional Pts. for Week of Dec. 4

Sunday- Ps 72 is a royal, political psalm.  For this season, vv. 10-11, 15 are linked to the Magi. Also, after the election look at how a ruler is judged at vv1-4,12-14. What prayers will you offer for our political leaders?

Monday-One of the beautiful practices of both the Celtic and Jewish imagination is blessing the world, blessing each and every encounter, experience, every ordinary moment. In the Jewish worldview, each act becomes worthy of blessing. Gratitude is offered for all gifts: upon awakening, when crossing a threshold, eating a meal, lighting candles. The Talmud calls for one hundred blessings each day.".--- Christine Valters Paintner

Tuesday-Dedicate one day this week to the casting of one hundred blessings upon all the myriad encounters and experiences that occur as you walk through the ordinary magic of your day.

Wednesday-Humanity cannot take Advent and God's coming among us to heart if we bypass the prophets. God's people struggled mightily with faithfulness and faithlessness. Their struggle and lack of discernment often brought dire and desperate consequences. Yet through the cacophony of pleas, arrogance, and wars, God's prophets spoke to the people of a redemptive future of joy, kindness, and peace—all made possible by God's steadfast love born into the world. When we allow God's prophets to speak a word to us, alongside those of the Gospel writers, we discover an even more stellar and glorious gift in the manger: Because of the darkness, the Light comes to us. Pamela Hawkins

Thursday-Eckhart asks: 'What is life? God's being is my life. If my life is God's being, then God's existence must be my existence and God's is-ness is my is-ness, neither less nor more.' He is speaking of identity with God’s being, not humans becoming God."

Friday-Hope has the power to sustain us in the midst of a life of uncertainty and dis-ease as well as a world of dissonance and violence. It is so not because of the one who hopes but because of the one in which that hope is placed."

Saturday-Scotus-We suffer from the "soul's forgetfulness," he says. Christ comes to reawaken us to our true nature. He is our epiphany. He comes to show us the face of God. He comes to show us also our face, the true face of the human soul.