Have you ever considered what we don’t know about Jesus? Or, to phrase the question differently, have you ever considered what isn’t in the Gospels? What we don’t know about Jesus is quite surprising when you think about it. We aren’t told what he looks like. We aren’t told how his “father” died. We aren’t told where he went to school, if he was well-liked as a boy, if he had friends, or what his favorite food was. We’re told almost nothing about the first 30 years of Jesus’ life except for two different stories about his birth and this one story about Jesus as a twelve-year-old boy in the Jerusalem Temple. 

It probably should not surprise us then that legends grew up about the child Jesus. One of the more famous collections of these legends is known at the Infancy Gospel of Thomas. To be clear from the outset, there is no historical basis for these non-canonical legends, but in the Infancy Gospel of Thomas, the infant Jesus breathe life into birds fashioned from clay, curses two boys and kills them, strikes the parents of one of the boys blind, reverses the deaths and the blindness, resurrects a friend who fell from a roof, heals a man who chopped off his own foot with an ax, carries water on a cloth, produces a feast from a single grain, stretches a wood beam to help his father finish making a bed, heals his brother James from snake poison, resurrects another child, and finally resurrects an older man who had died while working construction. Between all these miracles are failed attempts to teach the child Jesus, and the story culminates in our reading this morning with Jesus in the Jerusalem Temple teaching the elders and teachers of the people as he expounds the law and the prophets. 

It is works like this that tell us that from very early on people were interested in stories about the early life of Jesus, which makes it all surprising that for all four of the canonical Gospels the story of Jesus’ life really begins when Jesus is about thirty years old and is baptized by John the Baptist. John start’s with Jesus’ preexistence and then moves right to John the Baptist. Luke and Matthew tell stories about his birth, and Luke tells the story in this morning’s reading, and then both move directly to John the Baptist, and Mark skips over Jesus’ birth entirely and begins his Gospel with John. And all of this information leads me to ask the question, considering that no canonical Gospel tells a single story about Jesus between his birth and the events with John the Baptism other than this story, why does Luke include this incident with Jesus, his parents, and the Jerusalem Temple?

One answer could be that Luke got this story directly from Mary. Scholars have noted for a long time that Luke has a unique expression about Mary treasuring things in her heart, and it’s been argued that this is because Luke is getting some information directly from Mary or a source directly connected to Mary. But that still doesn’t explain why Luke only includes this story. What is it about this story, amongst all the others that Luke could have included, and surely there were many, that made it worthy of inclusion in his Gospel?

First, you may have noticed that I described this story as the “incident with Jesus, his parents, and the Jerusalem Temple” a moment ago. In Luke’s Gospel, the Temple is not just a place but is rather more like a character in the story. We’ve already been to the Temple in Luke’s Gospel, and the Temple will repeatedly appear throughout the narrative. Given Luke’s emphasis on the Temple, it’s not surprising that he might want to include a story of a young Jesus in the Temple, especially considering what Jesus says about the Temple. When Mary and Joseph find Jesus, he says, “Why were you looking for me? Did you not know that I must be in my Father’s house?” (Luke 2:49).

In this story, from a very early age, we see not only that Jesus understands his ministry is going to involve the Jerusalem Temple, as Luke repeatedly shows, but he also makes a remarkable claim. The Temple is often referred to in the Old Testament as the House of the Lord, but that’s not what Jesus calls it when he answers Mary and Joseph. He could have said, “Did you not know that I must be in the House of the Lord?” and that would have been a reasonable way to express what he was trying to say. But Jesus says something incredible. He calls the temple not “the House of the Lord,” but “my Father’s House.” This claim is utterly unique in the history of Judah and Israel. Even David and Solomon, who as kings would have had the right to refer to God as their father, never referred to the Temple as “my Father’s house.” The reader of Luke’s Gospel is already prepared for this claim, based on what the angel Gabriel says to Mary, but what we see here is that Jesus understands who he is, even from a young age. Does he know the full depths of that truth? That’s impossible to know, but here we see clearly that Jesus knows his ministry will involve the Temple and that, somehow and in some way, his relationship to God is unique amongst all others. 

Second, this isn’t the only story that Luke will tell that involve people walking along a path and missing Jesus. Here towards the beginning of Luke’s Gospel, Mary and Joseph as leaving Jerusalem and heading home, and they realize that Jesus isn’t with them. At the end of the Gospel, two disciples will be walking along the road to Emmaus, and they will be missing Jesus too. To say that Luke frames his Gospel this way may be saying too much, but the similarities between the two stories, one towards the beginning and one towards the end of his Gospel, can’t be missed. Jesus’ parents find him in the Jerusalem Temple. The disciples find Jesus, not in the Temple, but rather, he is made known to them in the breaking of the bread. Even though we don’t have Jesus physically present with us now, that doesn’t mean he is absent from us. Jesus is present with us in the Eucharist, and when we feel like we can’t find him, we can always come to the altar, and he will draw near.

And maybe that’s the whole point of this story. Mary and Joseph have gone off on their own. They’re heading back home, which is what they think they should be doing. But they haven’t stopped to see if Jesus is with them or not. When we go off course, it’s not Jesus who has wandered away from us, but we who have wandered away from Jesus, and the only solution is to find him. For Mary and Joseph, that meant turning around and backtracking. For the disciples, that meant opening the word of God and experiencing the presence of Jesus in the breaking of the bread. 

While we can’t say for sure why Luke includes this story from the early life of Jesus and not others, what we can be sure of is that Jesus is never far from us. When he feels far, it’s because we have wandered off or, as is the case of the disciples on the road to Emmaus, because we have failed to believe what he said. He is the only Son of the Father. He is the new Temple. He is the sacrifice for the sins of the whole world. He is the one to whom the Law and the Prophets always pointed, and he is the one who is made known to us in the breaking of the bread. The miracle of Christmas is that the God of heaven and earth has drawn near to us through a child in a manger, and now that same child, in many ways but especially in the Eucharist, invites us to draw near to him. 

Amen.

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I was struck on Tuesday evening by the stunning theology of some of our favorite Christmas hymns. I won’t repeat them at length here, and I certainly won’t sing any of them. I’ll spare you that. But it got me thinking about Christmas and how profound the theology Christmas truly is, and we get an excellent sampling of the depths of that theology in our readings this morning. There’s no attempt made by the church to determine the actual day of Christ’s birth and celebrate Christmas on that day. Why the church chose December 25th is a complicated question, but it’s safe to say that, at least in part, is had to do with the Christianizing of an already established pagan holiday. But that suggests that Christmas isn’t so much about the day as it is about the theology, and if you want to get the theology of Christmas, there is perhaps no better set of readings than you what we have this morning. 

It’s worth noting that today’s readings are always the readings on the First Sunday of Christmas. There aren’t options for years A, B, and C. There is always one Sunday between Christmas and Epiphany, and today’s readings are always the readings, so there is something important here for us to understand about Christmas. And it’s not just the Johannine Prologue, although that in itself is worth probably a dozen sermons. It’s all the readings collectively that give to us not only a theology of Christmas but a theology of redemptive history. 

Israel’s belief about its God was different from the way the Greeks and the Romans thought about divinity. For the people of Israel, three primary beliefs about God made sense of everything else that the Old Testament said about God. The first of these beliefs was monotheism. The Old Testament Scriptures make clear again and again that there are not a pantheon of gods in the heavens, but one, true, and only God. That’s the first belief: monotheism, and it is given almost creedal formulation in the Shema, “Behold, O Israel, the Lord our God, the Lord is one.” 

Second, deriving from the first belief, Israel believed that its God, because he was the only God, was the God who made heaven and earth. God is the creator. There is nothing that exists, save God himself, in heaven, on earth other, or under the earth that God did not make. Israel’s God is the creator-God. That’s the second belief. 

And as the second belief flows from the first, and so too does the third belief flow from the second. The Old Testament says that not only is Israel’s God the only God, and not only did he alone make the heavens and the earth and all that is not God, but he is also the covenant God. God created the heavens and earth, but something went wrong, and so God picked one family out of all the families on earth to fix what had gone wrong in his creation. He chose Abram to be a blessing to all the families of the earth, and he made promises to Abraham and his offspring forever. Of course, the story of the covenant God involves more than just the story of Abraham. The story of Abraham and his offspring is a subset of the story of humanity, but the story of the Old Testament after Genesis 12 is almost exclusively the story of Abraham’s descendants, and the two questions that rest over the entire narrative are this: how is God going to use this family to fix the world and what is to come of the promises made to the children of Abraham?

From this perspective, we see that the Old Testament contains two great stories. There is on the one hand, the story of God, the only God, the creator of heaven and earth, who chose Abraham and his offspring to fix what had gone wrong in his creation, and on the other hand the story of Israel and her struggle if not failure to be the people whom God had called and commanded her to be. 

Of course, the biggest crisis in the story of Israel was the exile. Removed from her land with her Temple destroyed, it might seem that God has forsaken his people and given up on his plan. But God has made promises to the offspring of Abraham, so how could he abandon them? How could they be forsaken? God couldn’t simply move on to another nation. That’s what we hear in this morning’s Psalm. God has dealt differently with the descendants of Jacob than with any other people. “He declares his word unto Jacob, his statutes and ordinances unto Israel. He has not dealt so with other nations; neither have they knowledge of his laws.” Israel was unique. Israel wasn’t like the other nations. Israel was supposed to be part of God’s plan to fix what was wrong with creation, but as the Old Testament shows and as the exile made certain, Israel had become part of the problem despite its calling and uniqueness. 

But Isaiah spoke of a day, as we heard, when God would act, and what was once forsaken and desolate would be renewed again. “You shall no more be termed Forsaken, and your land shall no more be termed Desolate, but you shall be called My Delight Is in Her, and your land Married.” The God who had departed his Temple and left it to be destroyed promised to return to his people, remove the curse of the exile, and restore Jerusalem and its people to their unique place in his plan.

But then something happens which no one expected and no one foresaw. There were two great stories: the story of the God who had made the heavens and the earth, the only God, who had put in motion a plan to bless his cursed creation, and the story of the children of Abraham, given the Law, given the promises, and yet disobedient, cast into exile, but even there in the darkness of exile a promise remained that God would return to his people and what was forsaken would be so no more, and what was desolate would be restored. And then on the first Christmas, those two great stories, the story of God and the story of Israel, came together inseparably forever in the child in the manger. 

God became a child of Abraham. God became part of Israel’s story. He never stopped being God. That’s was John’s prologue is making clear. If Israel’s God is the creator God, then the Word made flesh must be part of the creative process as well. So, John says that “All things were made through him, and without him was not anything made that was made.” The Word made flesh was with God. He is God, and now the Word made flesh has dwelt among us. But Jesus doesn’t just dwell among us. That’s not what John says. John tabernacled with us. The God who left his Temple has returned, not to the physical building but in a moveable “tent,” God’s presence now dwelling with his people again as he had promised, and in him, in the Word made flesh, all the promises that God had made to Abraham and his offspring forever come true. God does not abandon the children of Abraham. Far from it. He becomes one of them. He unites himself to that story forever, so that in Christ, all the promises of God to the offspring of Abraham might be fulfilled.  

That is the miracles of Christmas. The two great stories become one story. The story of God and the story of Israel become one great story with surprising and startling twists and turns along the way. And if you want to ask what becomes of the promises made to the children of Abraham, Paul gives us the answer, and this is what makes Christmas so stunning. Throughout the early church, and I mean the earliest years of the church, the critical question debated from Jerusalem to Galatia is who are the offspring of Abraham. The logic was clear. God had made promises to the family of Abraham, but now just as Isaiah had promised, the nations were streaming into to be a part of this new Jewish movement, so what was to happen? Were the Gentiles going to be circumcised so that they would become children of Abraham and thus inheritors of the promises, and if not, why not?

Paul’s answer is clear. God united himself to the story of Abraham’s offspring forever on that first Christmas, and then he did something stunning. Something spectacular. Something incredible. Something that no one could have expected or anticipated or believed. God united himself to the story of Abraham’s offspring forever, and then he invited the world to unite themselves to his story forever and thereby make everyone who is in Christ inheritors of the promises of God. “For as many of you as were baptized into the Messiah have put on the Messiah. There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither slave nor free, there is no male and female, for you are all one in Jesus the Messiah. And if you are the Messiah’s, then you are Abraham’s offspring, heirs according to promise” (Galatians 3:27-29).

Think about all this for a moment. John makes it abundantly clear that the Word made flesh is the same God who Israel worshipped. He is the creator God. He is the covenant God. And whatever it might mean to speak of God this way, there is still only one God. And that one God on Christmas morning unites himself to the story of Abraham, to the story of humanity, and through the death and resurrection of the Word made flesh he brings to fulfillment the old covenant and ushers in the new covenant in his blood. And he invites the world, through the sacrament of baptism, to unite themselves to him forever. In Christ, there is no Jew nor Greek. There is no slave nor free. There is no more male and female because whoever you are, wherever you come from, whatever you do, the only thing that matters about you is that you have been baptized into the Messiah. In him, all the promises of God are yes. In him, you become the children of Abraham. In him, you share his life, death, and resurrection. In him, the life that takes its first breaths in Nazareth becomes your life. The creator God unites himself to Abraham’s offspring forever, and he invites the world, he invites you, to unite yourself to him forever. 

Christmas is more than just the theology of the Incarnation. Christmas is an invitation. It’s not just that God hitches his wagon to humanity’s story, but God invites you to hitch your wagon to his story. And that’s why we do all of this. That’s why we use liturgy. That’s why we use a liturgical calendar because his life is our life, his story is our story. In him, everything we are gets erased, and thank God for that. God doesn’t look on you and me and see you and me. He sees the cross. He sees the empty tomb. He sees the child born in a manager who now sits that the right hand of God always making intercession for us. He sees Jesus the Messiah because his story is now our story, and therefore we need to hear that story over and over and over again lest we forget. 

That new, great, surprising, incredible story, born from two great stories in the way that Jesus is born from the Spirit and a daughter of Abraham, begins at Christmas. This miracle is only the start of the story. It will take a tragic turn, and then it will have a glorious surprise, but that story starts here. It begins in a manger, when the only God, the God who made heaven and earth, the God who called Abraham and his offspring to be a blessing to the world, unites himself to Abraham’s offspring forever, and now he invites you to join your story to his, forever and ever. 

Amen. 

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Who is this child in the manger? That really is the question that all of us must answer for ourselves. The story of the life of Jesus begins with the newborn child being laid in a wooden manager, and it will come to an end when that same child is nailed to a wooden cross. Of course, it’s part of the Gospel that the life of Jesus doesn’t end there at the cross, but the wood of the manger and the wood of the cross demand from us an answer to the same question: Who is this?

Luke draws our attention to the manger for several reasons. The manger adds a human touch to this story. We can picture the young mother, having just experienced the trauma/miracle of childbirth, laying her newborn son in this wooden feeding trough. The manger also adds a theological dimension to this. It shows the extent of the way to which God the Son humbled himself, leaving the throne of heaven for an animal’s feeding trough. 

But, while both those points are true, in Luke’s narrative, the manger does else. Three times Luke mentions the manger. First, Mary gives birth to her son and lays him in the manger. Second, the manger is the sign for the shepherds. The shepherds are told the most incredible news by the most incredible messengers: “Fear not, for behold, I bring you good news of great joy that will be for all the people. For unto you is born this day in the city of David a Savior, who is Christ the Lord. And this will be a sign for you: you will find a baby wrapped in swaddling clothes and lying in a manger” (Luke 2:10–13). 

So, first, Mary lays her newborn son in a manger. Second, the angels are told that the manger is a sign for them of the wonderful news about which they just head, and then lastly, the shepherds find Mary and Joseph, and more importantly, they find “the baby lying in a manger” (2:16). In case you’re wondering, this is not a common thing. Shepherds don’t usually just happen upon babies in a manger, and new mothers weren’t prone to leaving their child in an animal’s feeding trough. But this manger is the sign to the shepherds. It is the witness that the incredible things spoken by the angels were in fact true. So, if we ask the question “Who is this child in the manger?” it is the angels who give us the answer. 

The answer the angels give can be reduced down essentially to three words: σωτὴρ, χριστὸς, and κύριος, or, in English, Savior, Messiah, and Lord. However, before we look at these three names, we need to consider how Luke has introduced the story of the birth of Jesus. Sometimes we see names in the Bible, and we skip right past them. For example, Daniel 7 begins “In the first year of Belshazzar king of Babylon,” and we assume that Daniel is mostly giving us a date, and so we don’t think too much about who Belshazzar was, how he had become king of Babylon, or anything like that. And sometimes that’s ok, but in the case of the opening verse of Luke 2, it’s particularly important that we don’t do that.

The first verse of this chapter begins, “In those days a decree went out from Caesar Augustus that all the world should be registered.” Caesar Augustus is not a name that you should let your eyes over lightly, especially when you consider the fact that this type of introduction isn’t typical in the Gospel of Luke. In this case Luke wants us to understand the story he’s about to tell in the context of a world ruled by Caesar Augustus. 

August was the adopted son of Julius Caesar, and he became the first emperor of the Roman Empire after a bloody civil war that saw him bring an end to all his rivals and turn the great Roman republic into an empire. If you aren’t familiar with Caesar Augustus but this still sounds vaguely familiar, the rise to power of Emperor Palpatine in the Star Wars prequels is based on the story of Caesar Augustus. Unlike Palpatine, who is feared through the Star Wars universe, Caesar Augustus is praised and beloved, at least by those who survived his rise to power. August was said to have brought peace and justice to the world. His reign initiated a period of relative peace known as the Pax Romana. 

Augustus declared that his father Julius was divine, which meant that he was the Son of God. Roman historians told the story of Roman history as a long tale that climaxed with the birth and rise to power of Caesar Augustus. His birth was “good news,” another word the angels use. He was the world’s true σωτὴρ καὶ κύριος, savior and Lord. People even began to worship Augustus as a God. 

And yet, it’s during his reign, during the Pax Romana, in part of his empire, that an angel of the Lord appears in the night sky to lowly shepherds and announces to them the good news. It wasn’t the good news of the empire, but the good news of the kingdom. The angel announces that despite the claims of the one who sits in power in Rome, the world’s true κύριος is here, the world’s true σωτὴρ is here. And what’s the sign? The manger. That’s the sign to the shepherds. 

Luke is unmistakably setting up a conflict between the empires of this world and the kingdom of God, and that conflict will come to a head when the child grows up and stands before Pilate. August brought peace with a sword. Jesus will bring peace with a cross. He who was laid in a wooden manager will be nailed to a wooden cross and still today we must answer the question: “Who is this? Who is this child in the manger?”

σωτὴρ, χριστὸς, κύριος, Savior, Messiah, Lord: that’s the answer. He is the savior. He is the one who saves his people from their sins. He saves us from ourselves. He saves us from sin, death, and the devil. He saves us from all the wrong, all the hurt, all the pain, all the mistakes, and all the other negative parts of what it means to be the descendants of Adam and Eve. He saves not by conquering but by giving of himself fully and completely. He saves not by force but by unstoppable love that knows no limit to how far it will go to save the beloved. The child in the manger is our savior. 

But he is also χριστὸς, the Messiah. He is the one who brings all of Israel’s history to its climax. The great story of Abraham, David, and the exile finds its full and fitting conclusion in his birth, life, death, and resurrection. He answers the longings of our hearts for God to draw hear to us by being the presence of God in person. He is the one of whom the prophets foretold and the one to whom the Old Testament always pointed in sometimes surprising and startling ways. The child in the manger is the Messiah. 

He is σωτὴρ. He is χριστὸς. But he is also κύριος. He is the Lord. There are many things in our lives that seem to demand our allegiance, but the birth of this child and the announcement of the angels should remind us that there is nothing else in this world to which we owe more allegiance than the child in the manger. It would be an interesting experiment to ask our friends and family what it is that they think defines us. What do you think those closest to you would say is your first allegiance? What’s the thing about you that defines you more than anything else to those closest to you and those who know you best? Would they say it’s the job you have, the car you drive, the clothes you wear, the way you vote, your favorite hobby? What would others say defines you? I spent some time thinking about these questions for myself, and I’m not sure I liked the answers I heard back inside my own head. So, I’m reminding myself today that my first allegiance is to this child in the manger and that nothing should define who I am more than that allegiance. Maybe you need to hear that reminder this evening too. 

The empires of this world demand our allegiance. Stores tell you that if you don’t buy this product, your life won’t be complete. The news tells you that if you don’t vote this way or that way the whole world is going to fall apart. The music, television, and film industry tell you that if you don’t shell out the cash for this next song, this next show, this next movie, you’re going to be out of the cultural look and unable to speak the language of the world around you. You’re going to miss out on something exciting and thrilling. Those are the empires that I hear speaking to me most loudly, but I’m sure you hear the call of empires too.  

But unless those empires were wrapped in swaddling cloths and laid in a manger, there will always be something and someone more worthy of our allegiance because the manger is the sign. Only the child in the manger and only his kingdom can demand our full and total allegiance because only he is σωτὴρ, only he is χριστὸς, only he κύριος. Only the child in the manger is Savior, Messiah, and Lord, and if you don’t know him this evening, come find him in the manger. Kneel before the manger. Lay all your hurt, all your pain, all your worry, all your care, and most importantly, all your sin upon him, and he will set you free. 

Amen.

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Matthew 11:2-19

Has it ever seemed like God has failed to meet your expectations?

It’s comforting to me to know that even someone like John the

John is in prison. We won’t get the full story for a few more

The rumors swirling around Jesus aren’t good. They say he’s a

Now, I don’t intend to solve this problem today, but I do

On the flip side of that is natural theology, which is

Systematic theology, in the face of evil, in the face of

Jesus puts it this way: “Go and tell John what you hear and

Since Isaiah 35 is an end of the exile text, it seems to me

The author and theologian Leslie Newbigin once said, “I am neither an optimist nor a pessimist. Jesus Christ is risen from the dead.” It might take a moment to process that, so let me repeat it. “I am neither an optimist nor a pessimist. Jesus Christ is risen from the dead.” I think what Newbigin means is that we can’t be overly optimistic about the way the world will go in our time, nor too pessimistic. Jesus Christ is risen from the dead, yes, and with his resurrection, God’s new creation came bursting forth, but the world still put him to death, and God’s answer wasn’t to spare him from death, but to raise him from the dead after he had died. Sometimes things work out the way we want. Sometimes God’s answer is Easter. But the answer does come. The answer to all our hurt and woes and longing and doubts – the answer to all of it is coming, either now or at Easter.

And now, while we wait expectantly for the return of Jesus Christ, we must, as James tells us, “Be patient, and live out the kingdom of God.” I’m not blessed with the gift of miracles, maybe you are, but that doesn’t mean that we can’t be doing the good work of the kingdom of God, and we need to provide you more opportunities to be involved in that work. But as we wait with patience for the coming of our Lord and King, who will set all things to rights, let’s not start from above or from below, not with a system nor with guesses about what God is or isn’t doing in history. Start with what God has done in Jesus Christ. Start with the Kingdom of God. This approach won’t solve every problem practically or theologically. It didn’t free John from prison. It didn’t save Jesus from the cross. But it will give you hope. It will give you faith. It will give you love as you look out onto the world, with the Word of God buzzing around inside your head, and you start to see all the unusual, beautiful, incredible ways that God is at work in this world. The answer to our doubts, the answer to our questions, the answer to our longings, fears, and troubles is Jesus Christ, and his kingdom, and his cross, and his resurrection, and he is coming. Maranatha. Come, Lord Jesus.

Amen

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Matthew 3:1-12

Our collect this morning is one

This morning’s collect, which I

Let me reread the collect, and

Let me make two points about

Secondly, I want to point out

Cranmer believed that it is the

Yet, what strikes me is that

Let me give you an example that

The story the Gospels are

And that concerns me because his

We have that vocation because we

Amen

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Romans 13:8-14; Matthew 24:29-44

Advent is a season of waiting.

Waiting is one the defining

That gap between our reach and

And I want to be clear, this is

Second, not only does Jesus say

And as someone who has studied

So, if Advent is the season of

We don’t know when he’s coming

And while we Christians aren’t

And you might say, “Father,

St. Paul says that salvation is nearer now than when we first believed. That’s what we know. The clock is ticking, and Paul tells us to put on the Lord Jesus Christ. As the one who came from heaven to earth, earth to heaven, and one day from heaven to earth again, as the one who came and not only preached the kingdom to the least of these but enacted the kingdom through his generous giving of himself on the cross, he is our vertical and horizontal alignment. He is the one who shows what it means to love God with all of who we are. He is the one who shows us what it means to love our neighbors as ourselves. So, put him on. Be conformed to his image. Read the Gospels and see the life he lived and ask what it would look like for you to live that kind of life today, and then pray for the Spirit’s life-changing and world-changing power to live that way.

We are at the start of a new

Amen.

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Luke 23:35-43

The Revised Common Lectionary divides the readings for Sundays into three sets: Year A, Year B, and Year C. In Year A, most of the Gospel readings come from Matthew, in Year B, they come from Mark, and in Year C, they come from Luke. John’s Gospel is divided out among the three years and shows up particularly on major and lesser feast days. Thus, today, we have come to the end of the three-year cycle. Next week will be the first week of Advent, and we will start again at Year A, but today we find ourselves at the very end of the lectionary: the last Sunday of Year C. And we have a special name for the last Sunday of the year. We call it Christ the King Sunday.

The liturgical logic works like this: in Advent, we await God’s salvation, in Christmas, we celebrate that God has come to us and united himself to humanity forever, in Epiphany, we give thanks that manifestation of God was not for one people only, but for the whole world, in Lent, we walk with Jesus for forty days through the wilderness and prepare ourselves to take up our cross and follow him, in Holy Week, we walk with Jesus day by day through the most important week in human history and we marvel at the mystery of the God who dies and rises again. We celebrate his resurrection throughout the season of Easter because with the resurrection of Jesus, God’s new creation has begun. We celebrate the outpouring of the Holy Spirit at Pentecost, and then we come to Ordinary Time, or as some call it, Trinity Season. This season is the church age, and it culminates today in Christ the King Sunday. Just as human history as we know it will come to an end with Jesus Christ putting all his enemies under his feet, including death, and handing the kingdom over to his Father, so our liturgical history comes to an end with a celebration of Christ the King of Heaven and Earth.

You

“He is

Now

I

What

And what I would like to suggest to you this morning is that we will never understand the true nature of Biblical Christianity unless we can understand why the crucifixion shows up in our readings on Christ the King Sunday. We understand power, glory, might, strength, and authority, and king like that is a king that we can follow, but Jesus never said, “Take up your crown and follow me.” He said, “Take up your cross and follow me.” That is our king’s command. There is a crown waiting at the end, yes, and we will lay it at the feet of Jesus, but until our race is won and our journey through this wilderness that we call life is over, our King calls us to walk the same path that he walked, to take the same journey that he undertook, and that path, that journey, lead our King to Golgotha.

And

See

I said

It is true, or it is a lie? If it is a lie, we should all go home. However, if it is true, then the world is not the place it seems to be, and what it means to follow our king, to belong to his kingdom, may prove to be very costly. So, in Advent we will wait. We will wait for the God of justice to come, and when he does, wrapped in swaddling cloths and lying in a manger, we will follow our king wherever he leads. We will follow him to the wilderness. We will follow him as he enters the city. We will follow him as he gathers in the Upper Room. We will follow him to the cross. We will see him die, and there, with our cross in our hands, ready to give of ourselves fully for the good of others, we will say, “This is Christ the King.” And then, because we followed him to the cross, we will follow him once more, from the cross to the empty tomb, from Good Friday to Easter, from death to life, from this world to God’s new creation. May we always follow Christ, our King, wherever he leads.

Amen.

The post This is Christ the King first appeared on St. Dunstan's Anglican Church.

Malachi 3:13-4:6

This Sunday is sometimes referred to as the Second Sunday before Advent, which would make next Sunday the Last Sunday before Advent, which is more commonly known as Christ the King Sunday. The Readings for these two Sundays are intentionally linked. Some questions and promises arise in our readings this morning, in particular in our reading from Malachi, which find their answer in the New Testament, in the coming of Christ the King of Heaven and Earth.

In

Their

The

Now,

This

“For

God’s

Now,

Before

There

Amen.

The post The Day is Coming first appeared on St. Dunstan's Anglican Church.

Luke 20:27-38

I want to talk about the subject of resurrection this morning because I want us to be clear about what it is, what it is not, and where it comes from theologically. Because the concept of bodily resurrection is so prevalent in the New Testament and particularly central to the story of Jesus, we sometimes take it for granted that belief in physical, bodily life after death was also the belief of the Old Testament saints. And then, when we go looking for belief in resurrection back in the Old Testament because we assume it must be there, we often find it in verses that are ambiguous at best.

Take our reading from Job this morning. “And after my skin has been thus destroyed, yet in my flesh I shall see God” (Job 19:26). On the surface, that sounds rather unambiguous, but if you look in your pew Bible, you’ll notice that after the word “in” there is a number three. That is a translator’s note, and if you’ll look down at the bottom, you’ll notice the translator’s footnote that says, “or without.” This means that the translation committee was basically split on whether the translation should be “in my flesh I shall see God” or “without my flesh I shall see God,” and those two phrases have drastically different meanings. The translation “in my flesh” comes into English from the King James Version and was made famous by Part Three of Handel’s Messiah, which begins with these verses from Job. But the preposition מִן means “away from, out of,” so “without (or away from) my flesh” is a better translation.

If you want further proof, consider the fact that no New Testament author ever quotes or alludes to this verse from Job in reference to the idea of resurrection at all. Take, for example, our Gospel reading this morning. Jesus is talking to the Sadducees, who don’t believe in resurrection, and the reason they don’t believe in resurrection is because they don’t believe it’s in their Bible. And to answer their objection that there is no Old Testament basis for the belief in resurrection, Jesus doesn’t go back to this passage in Job, nor does he go back to any of the other passages that well-meaning preachers and teachers have used in the past to try to demonstrate this doctrine’s Old Testament origin. Instead, he goes to Moses and the burning bush and says, “But that the dead are raised, even Moses showed, in the passage about the bush, where he calls the Lord the God of Abraham and the God of Isaac and the God of Jacob. Now he is not God of the dead, but of the living, for all live to him” (Luke 20:37–38).

Jesus’ argument is that God does

So then, where does the doctrine of resurrection come from? In the Old Testament, the idea of resurrection is ambiguous at best, with maybe the ending of Daniel as an exception, but when you come to the New Testament, the doctrine is commonplace. In fact, it’s so commonplace in first-century Palestine that it’s notable that the Sadducees didn’t believe in resurrection. So, how do you get from the Old Testament to the New? In this case, you get there by way of the Apocrypha, particularly the book of 2 Maccabees. 

About the Apocrypha, the 39 Articles say, quoting Jerome, that “the Church doth read for example of life and instruction of manners; but yet doth it not apply them to establish any doctrine.” So, the 39 Articles does make a clear distinction between the Apocrypha and Scripture, yet it does include them among the books that “the Church doth read,” so it also distinguishes them from all other books. If you don’t have a copy of the Apocrypha, I would strongly encourage you to get one because not only are they included among the books that “the Church doth read,” but they also provide some of the closest contextual information for understanding Jesus and Paul that we have, as is the case with the doctrine of resurrection.

When you turn to 2 Maccabees 7,

The fourth brother says to the King,

The last brother says, and this is

The point I’m trying to make is this. The mother in this story, and her seven sons, are not comforted by the idea of escaping this world and going off to some non-bodily existence in the heavens. Their hope isn’t life after death, but life after life after death. Their hope is bodily resurrection because that is what it means to be alive. That was Jesus’ hope too. The Sadducees come to Jesus with a trap, combining the seven brothers from this story with the concept of Levirate marriage, but Jesus won’t play their game. Because it doesn’t matter whether there is or is not a textual basis for belief in resurrection in the Old Testament. What matters is this: (1) God is the God of the living, not the God of the dead and (2) because God is the God of the living, and because God is a God of mercy, and because God is a God of justice, and because God did not create us to be disembodied spirits but living beings with flesh and blood, for those who die in Christ, death and those who wield its power do not get to write the last words of your biography, God does. And the words he speaks are this: “eternal life,” bodily, resurrected, eternal life. That is our hope. That is what we mean by “resurrection,” and nothing less. God raised Jesus bodily from the dead, and if you will give your life to Christ and be found in him, then God will raise you bodily from the dead too. Death does not get the last word in our lives. God does.

Amen.

The post Seven Brothers first appeared on St. Dunstan's Anglican Church.

Revelation 7:9-17; Ephesians 1:11-23; Luke 6:20-26

Today we celebrate the Feast of All Saints’ Day. All Saints’ Day is traditionally celebrated on November 1st, but the Book of Common Prayer does allow for also celebrating it on the first Sunday after November 1st. What we celebrate today is the bond between the church triumphant and the church militant, by which we mean those saints who have already passed from this life and those whose work is still ongoing. But the connection that we share with all the Saints isn’t only vertical. It’s horizontal as well. There is a bond that exists today between all members of the body of Christ, and that bond crosses time, space, artificial lines on maps, and even death itself. To celebrate All Saints’ Day requires us simultaneously to recognize the horizontal and vertical bond that we share with all believers, not just the ones in heaven but also the ones on earth who might not look like us, talk like us, live like us, or think like us but nonetheless just like us participate in the body of Christ by faith.

That horizontal bond is one that we

What All Saint’s Day reminds us is that in a real sense you have more in common with that person on the other side of the planet than with someone who roots for the same sports teams, drives the same type of car, lives in the same type of home, or works the same type of job, if that person is not a believer in Jesus Christ. Of all the things that we use in this life to define ourselves and to give our lives shape and meaning, the only ones that are permanent, the only ones that transcend space and time, the only ones that transcend and even conquers death are faith, hope, and love in Jesus Christ. And in faith, hope, and love with Jesus Christ, we share a bond with all believers in heaven and all believers on earth, and we have a name for that bond. We call it the Holy Spirit.

The Church has for a long time considered the Holy Spirit to be the bond of love between the Father and the Son that is so strong that it is its own Person, and when we come to the waters to be baptized, we believe that God pours that Spirit on every one of us. The Holy Spirit is what we share with all believers across time, space, and death, and it is the Holy Spirit who not only unites us to Christ forever but also unites us to each other forever, and that should be the focus of our identity. Too often we identify ourselves by other things. I’m a Dolphins fan. I’m an Apple guy. I’m an American. I’m a Chicagoan or a Floridian. I’m a … and you can fill in the blank. Our first allegiance is always to a king and a kingdom, to a cross and an empty tomb, and everything else is a distant second. Nothing should define us more than who we are in Jesus Christ.

Because not only is everything else

The Spirt, Paul says, is our

So, give thanks today for all the saints. Give thanks for all those unnamed, unknown saints who live lives that say in subtle and not so subtle ways that the way up is the way down and that what it means to be human is different than what the world says it means. Give thanks for the Holy Spirit who brings us all from the waters of baptism to the Promised Land and who unites us and binds us together on our journey, making us one people not only with all the saints in this building but with all the saints across the globe and the saints in heaven who have gone before us. Give thanks for the day in which all the saints will rise from the dead, stand before the throne of God, and worship God Father, Son, and Holy Spirit with one voice in a new heavens and earth forever and ever.

May the Spirit bind us together

Amen.

The post All the Saints first appeared on St. Dunstan's Anglican Church.