Good Morning! This
year seems to have just whizzed by hasn’t it?
Indeed, every year I find the months seem to go a little quicker and the
days fly by just a little faster. And,
in all honesty, though, ladies and gentlemen, for every year that goes by I
wake up and find the world is just that much harsher, and the people in it just
a little more cruel. This year was
certainly no exception, was it? In 2015
so many names were brought to our attention, names like San Bernadino, Umpqua
Community College, Planned Parenthood at Colorado Springs, and Charleston,
North Carolina. 2015 also brought up
other names, names like Islamic State and Boko Haram, the latter an African
Extremist group who proudly proclaimed that they would marry nine-year olds,
abducted some 270 school girls and forced them into marriages. While we got those children back, our 6 month
response time to that kidnapping was of little use to the young women who were
victimized and the vast majority of whom are now pregnant. And indeed, adding to this list that is already
too long, we find also the names of Kim Davis, Missouri University, the
Baltimore Riots, and finally Paris France.
It makes me just want to hide. Yes,
when confronted with the shear immensity of how violent and ugly our world is
becoming it is easy to just want to lose myselves in the holidays, to envelope myselves
in Christmas lights and tinsel, in presents, and carols – anything really. Anything so I don’t have to admit to myself
that this day there is not peace on earth and even on Christmas there is no
goodwill toward men.
But in
light of all the conflict and ugliness we have experienced this year, be they
racial, religious, or otherwise, there is hope for all of this. The good news is the world doesn’t have to be
this way. It doesn’t have to be angry,
hurt, and confused and we do not have to respond to hate with hate, and in
these regards I want to introduce you to someone. He is not here right now, though I keep him
with me. You see, as I mulled over all
that the world has been through this past year, my thoughts kept returning to
my old mentor in seminary. Now, as your
pastor I want to affirm again that for us as Christians the answer is still
Jesus, but I think there is a place for the people God puts in our path, and
that our teachers and fellow humans often have important lessons to teach us
about Him. My mentor, as he referred to
himself, was the right reverend Dr. Wilbur P. Stone. He was a farmer, a businessman, a missionary,
a pastor, and a professor. He was a self
proclaimed Congregationalist Baptist Pentacostal who also enjoyed the
occasional Roman Catholic Mass. We didn’t agree on a lot theologically, but the
loving heart of this man always struck me to the core. As a Baptist minister he did not think a
number of things were proper, homosexuality and homosexual relationships being
one of them, but his response to his brother when he came out of the closet was
just phenomenal. When his younger
brother told his family he was gay and in a gay relationship, much of his
family left the dinner table never to speak to him again. Wilbur just sat there, and in his fifties no
less, as his brother turned to him through terrible tears. He asked Wilbur,
“Aren’t you going to disown me too?
Aren’t you going to tell me what a sinful human being I am and tell me
I’m going to burn in hell?” Wilbur turned to his brother and said, “I don’t know
what your destiny will be, that is not for me to decide. But I do know this, I am never going to
abandon you, and wherever you are bound there will not be a day when you are
not tripping over my love for you.”
After
my own study of the Scriptures and the history of the church, I disagreed with
him that homosexuality was a sin. Indeed,
there is no evidence the church had much to say on the subject for its first
1100 years and had no problem producing wedding liturgy for same-sex
couples. But while we disagreed in
theology we were in one hundred percent agreement over how that theology ought
to be applied. However, this is not the
story I want to tell you about the man.
The story I am reminded of in these turbulent times is the story of
Wilbur at one of his yearly Peace talks with Muslims in Eastern Africa. While Israel and Palestine get most of the
news coverage for peace talks in that part of the world, the fact is, as Wilbur
and many others have found out, other places need them too. And for many years Wilbur participated in
these talks, addressing Muslim peoples pushed out of their homelands by their
own Islamic brothers and pushed into tents where they had to rely on other
peoples for food and water. These talks
of course had varying degrees of success but the time Wilbur remembered the
most was one of the most recent.
These
peace talks were always respectful, always non-violent, but this particular
time a hard lined conservative Muslim imam found out about the talks and he
butted his way in. He was rude and he
was quarrelsome. He interrupted Wilbur’s
points constantly, seemingly having a quote from the Qu’ran for everything
Wilbur had to say. At the end the imam
got up and made a speech to Muslims in the crowd. The word of God in the Qu’ran was clear, he
said. Wilbur and these Christians were
infidels and even simply sitting here listening to them was nothing less than a
show of disloyalty to Allah. He called
on the Muslim men listening to repent, to rise up and denounce these Christians
as the faithless deceivers that they were.
Within moments some the Muslim men arose from within audience. Steel in their backs and righteousness in
their eyes, they stood up before Wilbur could even react. Boldly they rose up and pointed their fingers
at the Imam and said, “would you please just shut the hell up.” They got up and told him that after being
chased into the wilderness so many years ago by their own supposed Muslim
brothers and sisters that they now knew why the Prophet himself sought refuge
with the Christians when he was chased away by his own people. Ugliness and hate in fact did NOT win that
day, and years of hard work building peace amongst two very different peoples
was not undone by one man’s self-righteous bigotry. There was Peace on Earth in that little
corner of the world and it was there because
there was good will toward men.
Our
gospel lesson today is found in John, but today I want to talk about Luke’s
gospel. I want to talk about the
Christmas story that tells of censuses and inns; of shepherds and angels. I want to talk about that gospel, because in
that gospel goodwill is absolutely the point.
When we hear Luke describe Caesar Augustus’ decree, we hear merely words
of history, of a man just chronicling down facts as an accountant crunches numbers. But what Luke’s gentile audience would know
that perhaps we would miss is that the Jews revolted at every census. Unwilling to be tracked by their government
and unwilling to be recorded so they could be taxed, the Jews would be stirred
up in Judea and would engage in violent riots.
As a Gentile Theophilus, a gentile friend of God, you would be
constantly confronted with the often deadly actions of God’s people. And while yes the Caesars and Rome were
hardly above critique, that tax money supported the country in ways that people
really benefited from. It went to roads
that kept trade healthy, it went to the courts so people could submit their
pleas, and it kept the lands policed and crime down – in all except Judea. That is why the story of Joseph and Mary obeying
the census would be so shocking and yet so very vital. Greek Historian Diodorus Siculus commented
that the Jews considered all the world an enemy, but not these Jews. These Jews did not revolt, they did not make
war, they did not turn to violence. For
a Gentile believer in God this news was the world to you, for the long foretold
and awaited Messiah did not come through the self-righteous and the war
mongering, but through the peaceful and the obedient. It came from Jews who obeyed the edict of
their country, risking not only estrangement from their fellow kin, but risking
their own lives and the life of their child in traveling the dangerous Judean
countryside. This was the Holy Family,
the family that bore you as a gentile no ill will and was willing to burden
itself, even endanger itself, for your benefit.
And we
find as we read into Luke’s story further that the goodwill shown by Mary and
Joseph that day God would simply outdo.
We find that though His own people were typically inhospitable, that
though none would share or even give up their own room for a pregnant woman and
her family, that though it was amongst a people who had no more room for their
king than a stable and a feeding trough, God bore them no ill will. He came anyway. Though the Jewish faithful had been groaning
for centuries for a return of the Davidic King, it is both shocking and
despicable the only honor reserved for those of the line of David was
apparently that of a shut door. But when
God sent his angels it was not to punish, it was not to rebuke, but it was to
proclaim the coming of the Messiah with Joy.
And the shepherds, unclean vagabonds and thieves to a proper Jew of the
city, it was to them that the angels came.
Those who had been ostracized, those who were looked down upon, they
were not missed. In fact they were given
a special invitation. Though there was
many a reason for God to be angry and incensed, rightfully indignant and in a
mind to punish, it is the Incarnation, the birth of God as a human being, that
we find God’s true character – Love. God
bears mankind no ill will, it is we who bear ill will for one another.
And
so our gospel is like our lives this Christmas season. We too live in a world that chooses to be
harsh and inhospitable. We too live
amongst an unforgiving people who seem to always find a reason to have no
goodwill for their fellow man, people who see the lives of their brothers and
sisters as worth so much less than even the briefest false feeling of
righteousness. These people are
absolutely in the world, but the good news is that we don’t have to be like
them. Just as God chose not to make
mankind his enemy that fateful night 2000 years ago we can do that too. We can choose to be like God, we can choose to
leave the world of anger and fear and pride behind, we too can enter our suffering
world with both love and joy. We can
choose to love people different than us, to respect and show kindness to people
with whom we do not agree. Through this
we can have Peace on Earth! This is not
merely a numb and impotent phrase we tell ourselves this time of year. It is not a set of tinsel-colored blinders we
put every December the 25th, it is a promise made by the Maker. Peace on Earth is not only possible, but
because of the work of Christ it is the inescapable
reality.
Ladies
and Gentlemen, the world is in turmoil.
It is suffering and in despair.
The violence and the hate of this past year have made it forget the very
real hope we have for a better tomorrow.
It threatens to turn the Peace and the Joy of this Day into a mockery. It will not succeed. It will not succeed because we know of a
better way, a way that answers anger with kindness, hate with love and fear
with Peace, a way that began with God extending a hand of friendship and
goodwill to an undeserving people that 1st Christmas morning. May we inject the world with that same
Christmas grace every single day of the year.
Amen and Amen.
