Joseph and the importance of just showing up

Scripture: Matthew 1:1-25

Whenever we read about Joseph (the father of Jesus) in the Bible, which admittedly is not often because he only appears in first two chapters of Matthew and even less in Luke, I am reminded of a quote from the 1998 movie, Simon Birch, where one of the boys, Eddie, gloats after being cast as Joseph in the Christmas pageant. He’s pretty full of himself until Simon, the little misfit title character, says, “It's the Virgin Mary, Eddie. What does Joseph have to do with anything?”

Right. What does Joseph have to do with anything?

This really is the question. Joseph is just along for the ride; in fact, it’s his fault they need to make this journey to Bethlehem in the first place. What does Joseph have to do with anything? I mean, how many lines does he get in the Christmas pageant? How many songs are written about him? Nobody cares! And I suppose that’s natural and it’s even kind of funny… until we consider that perhaps Joseph does have a role to play, that, in fact, this story of Jesus’ birth hinges on adoption… and it centers around naming… both of which are incredibly powerful and both of which are Joseph’s job.

I bet most people would say that these verses in Matthew are about the Virgin birth, which is true in part, but I would hazard to guess that we say that primarily because that’s controversial, and our eyes tend to focus on sex if it’s to be found anywhere in the text. If there’s one verse out of one hundred that has to do with sex we’ll pick it out as the most important, because it tends to be one of our big hang-ups. For example, I can all but guarantee that even though this sermon has nothing to do with sex and I’m not going to mention it again after this moment it will show up in a couple of sermon notes. We get so hung up on Virgin birth stuff that we tend to miss the rest of what’s going on altogether. This is a story about Joseph staying in the picture, being the adoptive father of the Son of God, and it’s about the power of naming. It’s Joseph to whom the name of Emmanuel is given, not Mary, though, being the typical guy that he is, he apparently wasn’t listening to the angel very closely because instead of Emmanuel he went with “Jesus.”

Joseph is also important because of his lineage. The first reading today with that overly long list of descendents connects Jesus with the heroes of biblical history. That lineage runs through Joseph. None of those connections exist without Joseph, which is kind of funny if you stop and think about it because it means that Jesus was not actually a flesh and blood descendant of David or Abraham or any of the others. He is only an adoptive descendant of that line. If Joseph goes, so does Jesus’ primary connection with the Old Testament. Jesus’ flesh and blood lineage is through the more-anonymous Mary.

So why does any of this matter?

Know yourself... or else you'll never know why Jesus had to come.

Scripture:Isaiah 42:1-9

I wonder how much we really know ourselves. On the surface that probably seems like a silly thought. Who could you possibly know better than yourself? But we played a little game with our Confirmation students—and I’m going to have you play it wherever you are in a minute. I want you to think about two things--to really think and pore over it--and, if you can, share them with somebody else. The two things are these: #1: What is something you are good at? And #2: What is something you need to work at or improve upon? Take as much time as you need to ponder.

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Was that easy? I think for most of us it’s a challenge, especially when we get to talking about what we need to improve. Most of us have stock answers to those questions: I really need to work on balancing my time better, or I really need to work on getting out more, or I really need to work on having a more positive attitude, but those answers are often only scratching the surface of what’s really going on with us. We have a hard time being introspective enough to know what we need to work on, because it’s scary to look at ourselves in the mirror so closely. In many ways our families and friends can answer those questions about us better than we can answer them ourselves.

Many of our societal problems are rooted in our unrealistic opinion of ourselves. As Bertrand Russell once said, “The whole problem with the world is that fools and fanatics are always so certain of themselves, and wiser people so full of doubts.” To use biblical language, there’s a lot of pointing out specks in other peoples’ eyes and not a lot of acknowledging the log in our own. And what ends up happening in a world where we don’t know ourselves very well is that we get awfully defensive. Arguments escalate. Since we are not comfortable in the situation—since we aren’t very sure of ourselves—we overcompensate, and we become louder and brasher. We talk over others. We never listen. Listening is weakness, letting others talk is weakness, admitting there are things we don’t know is weakness.

The general rule of thumb is that the person who is loudest knows him or herself the least.

An argument for reading the parts of the Bible you don't like

“That’s not the God I believe in.” I’ve heard this phrase countless times in many different contexts. Sometimes it’s helpful. I remember our former presiding bishop Mark Hanson talking about meeting with people who don’t believe in God, listening to their stories of why they don’t believe, and then relating that the god they are describing is not the God he believes in either. Our conflicts over religion have a great deal to do with misunderstanding the kind of God that one another believe in. In that way this phrase is useful.

But in other ways I find it a cop out. For example: when it’s used by educated Christians who read the Bible until they find an attribute of God they don’t like, and then they explain that they don’t agree with that scripture because that’s not the God I believe in. This has always seemed backwards to me—I mean, how can you say that’s not the God you believe in when the God you believe in is revealed primarily through scripture? Aren’t you admitting that the God you believe in is only a reflection of the traits you define as “good”? Then, isn't God really only a reflection of you? It’s a pretty short jaunt from ignoring scripture we don’t like to making God in our image.

It bothers me even more when this comes from pastors, because most of them, like me, had to take vows in their ordination that contain a line that reads something like this: “The church in which you are to be ordained confesses that the holy scriptures are the word of God and are the norm of its faith and life…. Will you therefore preach and teach in accordance with the holy scriptures…?” Can we really take that vow seriously if we discount certain bits of scripture out of hand because of our preconceived notions of who or what God is?

I believe strongly in an open-minded approach to scripture, because I believe that all scripture exists to reveal God to us, and if that’s the case then what have we to fear from reading something that rubs us the wrong way? That doesn’t always mean that the Bible is clear or that we will like it; in fact, it pretty much guarantees the opposite; but it promises us that the Bible as we have it is sufficient for faith in the true God. Scripture might contain allegories and parables, events that are described as if historical even if they may not have ever happened, and even words of human people that conceal as much as they reveal, but God is found everywhere in the midst of it all.

In fact, I tend to believe that God is found particularly in the places we are challenged.

It's harder to be thankful as the oppressor than the oppressed (thoughts on Thanksgiving, Habakkuk, Ferguson, and whether we should be affected))

Scripture: Habakkuk 1:1-4, 2:2-4, 3:17-19

The following is a transcript

 

We’re reading from Habakkuk today, which is one of my favorite books in the Bible—also, coincidentally, impossible to pronounce. Habakkuk’s preaching has a good deal of weight because he is preaching from a place where he has absolutely nothing. It begs the question in this season of Thanksgiving: how can you be thankful when you have nothing? Thankfulness is something we associate with having things. That makes sense. I mean, it’s much easier when you have things, but Habakkuk tells us something different—that he is thankful precisely for having nothing.

He says, “Though the fig tree does not blossom and no fruit is on the vines… though the flock is cut off from the fold, and there is no herd in the stalls, yet I will rejoice in the Lord; I will exult in the God of my salvation” (Hab 3:17-18)

Though I have nothing… I will praise God for everything.

Habbakuk sounds so un-American. We tend to associate good things as things that we thank God for and bad things as things that we pray to God to remove from our lives. When we say we're "thankful in all things" usually it means that we find the positive in the negative--not that the bad things themselves are worthy of being thankful for. But on the other hand this attitude of Habakkuk is really refreshing, because he’s treating God as more than a good luck charm. We need more of that. At certain times in life this philosophy is very useful. This is why this scripture from Habakkuk has been used against regimes in Nazi Germany and apartheid in South Africa. It’s scripture for people who are being murdered and ruthlessly suppressed. People who have nothing but discover that being thankful even then gives them a kind of power.

Generational lines, "All Star" clergy, and reaching the aliens

Scripture: Jeremiah 1:4-10, 7:1-11
The following is a transcript

I'm going to start with a little poll. How many of you are subscribers or regular readers of The Lutheran magazine? Anybody here? Alright, we have some people who read The Lutheran. For those of you who do not (or for those that do but did not read this month's issue) they had a big issue on the clergy retirement wave, and the age demographics of clergy (and implicitly also congregations) in the ELCA. This became something of a controversial issue, because never did they say anything negative about the next generation--my generation--of clergy, but they did kind of imply things--like we're in the process retiring the "All Star team" of clergy. That's a message that many of us heard loud and clear, saying "Oh, so we're the minor league team, I guess." What ended up happening was a lot of good discussion already--and I expect more in the future. But what came up more than anything else is a sense of frustration at how easily we fracture along those lines of demographics and age.

So this call of Jeremiah that we read about today is a call to somebody who is extremely young. I think we fool ourselves if we think that God only calls people that are extremely young, but we also fool ourselves if we think that the only people who ever receive worthy calls from God are in their 50s and 60s and 70s. I think that God calls people of all sorts. There's no such thing in God's mind as too young or too old. In fact, in the Jeremiah reading God says that he set him apart before he was even born.

Are "All" really welcome?

            I’ve been spending a lot of time lately thinking about what it means to be welcome (a colleague who I knew from seminary is partly to blame for this; read her--no doubt better--reflection here). Like when we say “All are welcome!” or “Anybody can come!” or “Open to all!” and how that is, or is not, reflected in how we actually act. Is everybody welcome in our church? Is everybody welcome to become a member? To come forward for communion? To serve on council? To sing in the choir? You name it.

I know the nice thing to say is, “Yes, all truly are welcome.” But just because it’s nice doesn’t make it true, or even right. And also, come to think of it, are we really so sure saying “All are welcome” is even nice? Isn’t saying “All are welcome” actually kind of condescending when our actions don’t bare it out? I tend to think so, and I would be willing to bet that some folks who have drifted away from the church probably have similar thoughts.

It’s much easier to say “All are welcome” than to make it so. When we put it into practice welcoming people often comes with strings attached--i.e., you need to look more like us, or you need to talk more like us, or you need to believe more like us, or you need to work in one way or another on becoming more like us. You might say that you don’t actually believe that, but isn’t that exactly why we teach Confirmation, or send leaders to seminary, or teach deacons to serve communion?

See, this is what I’m getting at: It’s OK that not everybody is welcome to everything. Really, it is. An example: it’s OK that a person who refuses to confess a faith in Jesus is not allowed to become a member of the church. That doesn’t mean that they can’t be in the church at all. It doesn’t mean we don’t have room for “seekers.” It just means that there are doctrinal boundaries for the sake of defining who we are. It’s also OK that we create rules around people in our community who have issues with emotional or physical boundaries; it’s OK that we protect victims by helping to maintain good boundaries with those who have victimized them (in fact it’s more than OK; it’s necessary). It’s also OK that we have our own practices about when a person can take part in the various milestones of the church.

But that’s not usually what we mean when we say “All are welcome.” We’re usually not talking about the creedal stuff (what we believe) or the legal stuff (who we need to protect). We’re usually talking about people who are nominally Christians, or former Christians, or people who could become Christians, but they don’t come to church. If we consider this ideal imaginary person whom we are welcoming then I would hazard to guess that he/she is a person who looks, acts, and thinks like us, but who, for whatever reason, has never discovered this church that will feed him/her with exactly what he/she needs. Rarely do we consider that every person we are welcoming is a person who is necessarily different from us. Rarely do we consider that every act of welcoming a person is an act of changing who we are.

Bullying into prayer, swords into plowshares

Scripture: Isaiah 36:1-3, 13-20; 37:1-7, 2:1-4

            This is a story about bullying. Sure, it uses kings and nations as the characters, guys with long names that distract us. Who names their kid Sennacherib? All of that merely serves as a distraction from a story about a person with a loud voice, shouting “Be afraid! Be very afraid!” This is a story about bullying, about fear, and about all the terrible, awful, untrue things that people say to try to grab your attention. So this is a perfect story for our age.

            The Rabshakeh always gets a lot of attention. He’s the guy—or gal—who yells the loudest, who is the most threatening, and who seems the most sure of himself. I’m reminded of a time on The Simpsons when all the characters are bemoaning that nobody listens to them and Homer Simpson chimes in, saying, “I'm a white male, age 18 to 49. Everyone listens to me, no matter how dumb my suggestions are.” That’s what it feels like when there’s somebody yelling from a place of power. We feel like we need to engage with the person shouting on the TV or the radio because he or she is loud and given air time; even though that engagement only gives them more power.

            There are a lot of bullies out there. Some of them live in our schools—that much is still true. More and more of them live online these days. Plenty of them, like the Rabshakeh, are willing to stand up on a chair and scream to instill fear in the masses. Isn’t that what we expect from our legislators when they are passionate about an issue? Stand up and shout to show us how passionate you are. The loudest voice is the one that gets heard, after all.