Sermons

Last week, I tried to make the case that Jesus wasn’t just “biding his time” for his first thirty years.  I think he was experiencing the things that make life meaninful, that make life worth living, that make the world worth loving.  I suspect he knew the joy like we did of having playmates as a child.  He had loving parents.  He had brothers and sisters, who no doubt fought with one another and teased each other and loved each other.  He learned what it meant to be a person of faith because being a part of a community of faith was a built in part of his life.  He knew the joy of being creative and feeling competent and accomplishing things in his work.  For the first thirty years, Jesus was immersed in the world in which and for which he would die.

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This morning, I want to swing wildly toward speculation.  Last week, we met the boy, Jesus, at the temple, wowing the religious authorities with both his questions and his answers, and infuriating his parents who were worried sick after not being able to find him for three days.  No one bothered to write down the questions or the answers!  What’s up with that?  Instead, Luke gives us a story that heavily foreshadows the end of Jesus’ life.  Then, he tells us in our text for this morning, “And Jesus increased in wisdom and in years and in divine and human favor.”

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What I’ve challenged us all to do for a long time now is to listen to an ancient text and ask ourselves, “What is the human connection to this story?  When in my own experience have I spent time in the same “zip code” of human life?”  I believe that no matter when you lived or where you lived, there are common experiences that define what it means to be a human being.  Those common experiences allow us to talk to one another across the centuries.  Just like meeting someone today from a different culture can shed new light on our own, when we connect with someone from another time, we are invited to shed new light on our lives.

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As I’ve mentioned to you before, only two of our four Gospels contain stories about Jesus’ birth:  Luke and Matthew.  John starts with a deeply philosophical and theological statement about the word becoming flesh. In Mark, we just find ouselves in the wilderness with John the Baptist. The two Gospels that do have birth narratives tell different stories.  Luke focusses on Joseph and Mary and offers us the Magnificat and the Shepherds.  Matthew starts with Elizabeth and Zecchariah and introduces us to the wise men.  In Matthew, Mary and Joseph flee to Egypt.  In Luke, Mary and Joseph hang around Bethlehem for a while.  

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As we have moved through Advent and Christmas together this year, I’ve tried to consistently point out one thing:  December 25th was not Jesus’ birthday.  Rather, it is the day that on which we celebrate Jesus’ birth.  This mattters, in part, because the truth matters.  It matters because having to act as if our birth stories are somehow “video taped accounts” is a stumbling block for a lot of people:  “I just can’t do that whole virgin birth thing;” “I just have my doubts about a wandering star.” The question isn’t what actually happened.  Rather, the question is, “What were our ancestors in faith—Matthew and Luke—trying to say to us?”  If you can ask that question, then things lead into the most interesting question of all:  “How do the truths that they were trying to share speak to us, 2000 years later?”  When it comes to Advent and Christmas, I’m in it for the epiphanies, the insights that change how I look at my faith and my life.

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If you were to try to tell your life story, chances are that you would talk about turning point moments:  “Here was the first teacher who made school come to life for me;”  “Here was the day that I picked up a basketball, or my musical instrument, or sang in a choir for the first time;” “Here was my first crush who crushed me” or “Here was the day I met the person that I would one day marry.”  Some of the stories we tell might be embarrassing.  Some of our stories might be defining moments.   Either way, there are moments that we remember forever, that leave us forever changed.  There are moments that define us, even if we had no idea how important they were at the time.

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In my last sermon, we spent some time with Joseph.  He received terrible, shocking news:  his fiance’ was pregnant.  He knew that the child was not his.  He could have immediately given into rage and made it his singular goal to shame and humiliate Mary.  He didn’t.  He could have done whatever it took to make sure that his reputation was unharmed.  He didn’t do that either.  He could have invoked the law and seen to it that Mary was at least punished or perhaps even killed.  He didn’t go there.

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What do you do when something unexpected happens?  Of course, there is a whole category of surprising experiences in life—pleasant surprises, funny moments, delicious ironies—that we welcome.  We laugh.  We smile.  We think to ourselves, “Boy, life is really good!”  Sadly, though, those are not the suprises that I’m talking about his morning.  No, I’m talking about suprising challenges that come our way:  a driver who does something unexpected and, suddenly, we’re exchanging insurance information; a person we thought we really knew—someone we really trusted—until they do something completely out of character and leave us feeling betrayed; the doctor who calls back to tell us that the routine procedure that we just had has generated some not-so-routine results.  We’re caught flat-footed.  What do we do now?

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So, here’s a thought experiment.  Let’s imagine a coffee shop.  There is an owner and a steady set of employees, “baristas” we say today.  The majority of those customers are regulars.  They walk in at their “regular” time and are served by their “regular” barrista who knows exactly what they mean when they say, “I’ll have the ‘regular.” Without asking, they write the customer’s name on the cup and the drink is right up.  People recognize each other.  People are nice to one another.  It’s a comforting place.

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For the past 75 years, The Study of Adult Development, run out of Harvard, has been tracking the physical and emotional well-being of over 700 men who grew up in Boston.  This study closely followed men from their twenties into their eighties and nineties—one of the longest and most comprehensive studies ever done.  Of course, many of the findings are not a huge surprise: don’t drink too much; don’t smoke; exercise often; eat a nutritious diet; maintain a healthy body weight; keep on learning.  These are all individual concerns— lifestyle choices.

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If you are of a certain age, then maybe the most vivid memory of our text this morning is of a guy wearing a clown wig at an N.F.L. football game or some other big pubic event.  He was always in the endzone, perfectly positioned so that when the field goal or the extra point was being kicked, he would be visiible for all the world to see:  “John 3:16!” The guy’s name was Rollen Stewart.  Apparently, after living a rather wild life, he became a born-again Christian.  The  clown costume and the sign were his way of sharing the “good news,” until 1992, when he was arrested and convicted on three kidnapping charges. He received three life sentences.  Of course, this was not John 3:16’s fault…

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Before I talk about Ruth, I want to share two personal stories.  Each concerns a moment in my life where I had to make a tough decision.  I’m telling my stories in the hopes that they will prompt you to think about yours.

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