Being in the Presence of God

God, in Christian theology, becomes present to humanity in the person of Jesus. In the words of John, “the Word became flesh and lived among us, and we have seen his glory, the glory as of a father’s only son, full of grace and truth” (Jn. 1:14). In Jesus, God has walked in our shoes, tasting life as we live it, tasting death as we do. Even temptation did not pass God by, but Jesus remained faithful though having tasted life as we live it. Yes, in Jesus, God faced temptation as we do, but did not sin (Heb. 4:14-15). In the words of Paul, God humbled God’s self, in an act of self-emptying revelation. Not even death itself was withheld (Phil. 2:6-8). What transpired in the life of Jesus, God becoming manifest to humanity, is extended to us by the Spirit who makes the God known in Jesus present to all humanity.

Our assumption of God’s universal presence through the Spirit is humanized by the Christian belief that God became present to us in a person: “The Word became flesh and lived among us” (Jn. 1:14). The question remains: How is God present to me as a child of God? Scripture gives us at least two important ways of understanding God’s “particularized” presence with us. One means of the Spirit’s presence is corporate – in the church – but this does not mean the Spirit is not present to us as individuals. Help can be found to understand both the corporate and individual dimensions of God’s presence in the image of the Temple.

Ancient Judaism believed that God’s presence dwelt in the Tabernacle/Temple. The Ark of the Covenant was understood to be carrying God’s presence, God’s kabod or glory. This kabod or glory is what made the Temple holy. In Rabbinic Judaism the concept of the Shekinah emerged to describe God’s specific, self-willed presence in the world (immanence). Taking this understanding of the particularized presence of God, the kabod or the Shekinah to heart, we can better understand the New Testament concept of the church being the Temple of the Holy Spirit (1 Cor. 3:16-17; 2 Cor. 6:16; Eph. 2:21-22). They also help us understand the image of the human body being a “temple of the Holy Spirit. Paul wrote to the Corinthian church, saying: “or do you know that your body is the temple of the Holy Spirit within you, which you have from God, and that you are not your own? For you were bought with a price; therefore glorify God in your body” (1 Cor. 6:19-20). Although this particular passage speaks to the issue of sexual morality, the idea that the body is a temple of the Spirit suggests that God’s Spirit is present in the world wherever God’s people are present. Therefore, even as the Ark of the Covenant provides blessing to those who faithfully came into contact with it (1 Sam. 5:1- 7:2) -- and a word of judgment on those who seek to deny the Spirit’s presence – when the Spirit indwelt people of God are present, blessing is possible. This means that the Spirit’s ministry takes place not just within the church walls, but wherever the “temple” (the body) is present.

An excerpt from Gifts of Love (a book in process).

It's a Boy! -- An Advent Sermon

Matthew 1:18-25

Four Advent candles are now lit, which means that Christmas is close at hand. Except for some last minute shopping, mostly by husbands, all the packages should be wrapped, and either put under the tree or mailed. The kids, of course, are getting anxious. They’re shaking the packages and wondering about what’s inside the box. If it rattles, then it can’t be underwear or socks, and if it does rattle, then the imagination goes wild! Of course, everyone is on their best behavior, hoping that their fondest wishes will be fulfilled. But as you can see there’s still one candle that needs to be lit. The first four candles call on us to live lives of hope, peace, joy, and love, as we prepare ourselves to receive into our lives the full presence of God in the person of the Christ child. This last candle, the Christ Candle, represents the light that shines into the darkness of our world, lighting a pathway so that we might truly experience hope, peace, joy and love that are represented by the candles that we’ve already lit.

1. A MURKY START

As we ponder the meaning of these candles that we’ve been lighting these past four Sundays, and then look over at the Christmas tree, which is enwrapped by a multitude of lights, it should become clearer that part of the message of Christmas is enlightenment. For a moment let your mind drift to your evening drives through the many neighborhoods that we inhabit. Think of all the houses bedecked with Christmas lights. Normally dark streets can come alive with brightly colored lights, shining into the ever increasing winter darkness.

Even as Christmas is on the horizon, so is the Winter Solstice. In just two days, we will reach the point where the darkness of night reaches its fullest extent of the year, before the sun begins to reclaim the day from the darkness of night. It may be true that Constantine merged the Roman observance of the Solstice with Christmas, and that many of our Christmas traditions have their roots in this observance, but maybe that’s okay – as long as we recognize this to be true. Perhaps it’s appropriate that at the point at which the light of the sun pushes back the night, we will be celebrating the coming of the Son of God into the World to push back the darkness that has tried to take hold in our world.

This message of enlightenment is also present in the two gospel stories of Christ’s birth. Luke speaks of the angelic glory that breaks into the night sky, revealing the glory that is God, while Matthew speaks of a star that draws a group of sages from the east so that they might honor the one who is born king of the Jews.

There is much beauty in the traditional telling of the Christmas story, but we can also fall into a trap of romanticizing the story. Carols like “Away in a manger” envision the little Lord Jesus lying sound asleep, without a worry in his head, while Mary and Joseph, are surrounded by shepherds and magi, cooing at the little child. But, the biblical story is a bit more complicated than many of our beloved carols would suggest.

As Matthew tells it, an angel visits Joseph in a dream, and says to him: “Fear not.” Do you remember these words from last Sunday’s Cantata? “Fear not Joseph.” You see, Joseph has something to be concerned about. His betrothed is pregnant, and he’s not the father. By every right he can cast Mary off in shame, but being a good man, he wants to put her away quietly. But the angel, tells Joseph: Go ahead, get married, because this child, which Mary carries, is from the Holy Spirit, and he is a sign to the world that God is with us. In this dream Joseph learns the true message of Christmas: God is present and at work redeeming the world, through a mother and her child. Yes, Matthew’s story of Jesus’ birth is truly one of redemption, but before Jesus can redeem the world, Joseph must first redeem him and his mother, by claiming this boy as his own and by giving him a name, so he can have a future. Only then can he claim us as his own.

There are also hints of this redemption story encrypted in Matthew’s genealogy. Genealogies are fun, especially when we find skeletons in the closet. Those skeletons can be just as exciting to us as the family’s shining stars. Over all, this list that links Joseph to David and Abraham is unremarkable, except for the four women it mentions. Yes, four important but unusual women, appear in Jesus’ genealogy. Although Matthew doesn’t say anything about them, if we know their stories then we get a fuller picture of this one whose birth we’re about to celebrate. One of these women, Tamar, seduces her father-in-law, Judah, because he failed to provide for her. Rahab is the Harlot from Jericho who saves the Hebrew spies, while Ruth is a Moabite woman, a foreigner, whose great-grandson is none other than David. Finally, there’s Uriah’s wife, who bears David a son. Each woman plays a significant role in the life of God’s people and each woman, as is true of Mary, is claimed by God for a purpose. Yes, the Christmas story is one of redemption, Had Joseph not claimed Jesus as his son, then Jesus would have been born with a stigma. Fortunately, Joseph listened to the angel and took away that stigma, even as Jesus takes away ours by claiming us as his own. The story of Christmas reminds us that God doesn’t stand above the fray, untouched by human emotion and tragedy, No, even though darkness may surround us, God is present as the light that cannot be extinguished.

2. THE WORD OF SALVATION

Matthew says very little about Jesus’ birth, but he does emphasize the naming of Jesus. Unlike today, names back then carried meaning. When we name our children we don’t think about what these names mean, we simply choose names that are either popular in our culture or represent a family relationship. Since most parents want to make sure that their kids don’t have odd names, unless, of course, they’re from Hollywood, so today we see a lot more Jacobs and Isabellas in the nation’s nurseries than we do Gertrudes or Homers. As all parents know, picking out a name for a child isn’t easy, but in this case the parents had help from an angel, who tells Joseph to name the child, who is to be born to Mary, Yeshua, which means "he will save his people from their sins." By giving him this name, Joseph affirms God’s call on the life of Jesus, who will bring healing to a fragmented and broken world. Yes, in him the world’s pain, suffering, disappointment, and terror will be replaced with hope, peace, joy, and love. Because of him, the darkness that lays claim to our world will begin to dissipate and lose its hold on our lives. In giving him this name, Joseph is affirming God’s choice to redeem us, even as God chose to redeem and work through Tamar, Rahab, Ruth, and Uriah’s wife, better known to us as Bathsheba.

3. EMMANUEL IS WITH US

As we consider Matthew’s presentation of the Christmas story, we find ourselves standing on a river bank, looking across the water, into the Promised Land. While we can see Christmas on the horizon, Advent isn’t finished with us yet. Remember the words of our opening hymn: "O Come, O Come, Emmanuel, and ransom captive Israel, that mourns in lonely exile here, until the Son of God to appear. " Is this not the cry of our hearts, that God’s realm would come in its fulness bringing to our land hope and peace and justice? If we’re willing to join with God in this work of redemption by living into the realm of God, we’ll be ready to join in singing the chorus of this hymn: "Rejoice, rejoice! Emmanuel shall come to thee, O Israel!"

Yes, as the angel said to Joseph, you shall call him “Emmanuel” for God is with us, binding our wounds and setting us free. This hope is well stated, as the hymn continues: . "O come, Desire of nations, bind all peoples in one heart and mind; bid envy, strife and quarrels cease; fill the whole world with heaven's peace."

Although we live in a world torn by war and strife, our own lives need not be torn by bitterness and disappointment, for Emmanuel has come to “bind all peoples in one heart and mind” and fill the world with “heaven’s peace.” The choice is ours – will we accept this offer to live into God’s realm? Are we willing to cross the river into the Promised Land?

When we gather Friday evening to celebrate the coming of Emmanuel into our world, we will light the Christ Candle and gather joyfully to sing the songs of the season, before sharing together in the sign of Christ’s everlasting presence at the Lord’s Table. As we move through this week, may we prepare ourselves to hear a proud father named Joseph cry out to all who would listen: “It’s a boy.” And when we hear this proud father shout out in joy, we can offer our reply by singing: “come and worship, come and worship, worship Christ, the new-born King” (Angels, from the Realms of Glory, refrain).

 

Preached by:

Dr. Robert D. Cornwall

Pastor, Central Woodward Christian Church

Troy, MI

4th Sunday of Advent

December 19, 2010

God is with Us -- A Lectionary Meditation

Isaiah 7:10-16



Romans 1:1-7


Matthew 1:18-25

God is with Us!

Every year we hear cries from the populace demanding that Christ be put back into Christmas. In the minds of many there is a conspiracy, perhaps by a cadre of elite secularists, who are intent upon stripping Christ out of Christmas. But if Christ is at risk being removed from Christmas then it’s like that the culprit is the very ones who are making the demand. That is, our participation in the commercialization of this sacred feast of the incarnation is what is pushing the true message of Christmas out of the picture.

If we would attend to the voice of Scripture we would hear a message that is summed up in a name – Emmanuel, which is translated “God with Us.” The prophet told the king that God would provide a sign – a young woman would bear a child and she would call this child Emmanuel. And many centuries later, a gospel writer picked upon this prophetic word and reads the story of Jesus in light of it. The one, who, according to Matthew, is named Jesus because he will save his people, fulfills the promise that God would be with us. Therefore, as we watch the blue and the purple of Advent give way to the liturgical white and gold of the Christmas season, and as the hymns transition from a message of expectation to one of fulfillment, the message of God’s presence begins to make itself felt.

This message that God is with us permeates the three texts for the Fourth Sunday of Advent. Two of them speak of a young woman/virgin who bears a child as a sign that God is in our midst. Paul doesn’t speak of the birth of this child but does affirm the gospel message that comes down from the prophets of old, that God’s Son, who is descended according to the flesh from David, has been declared the Son of God through the resurrection. Before I engage more fully these three texts I’d like to add into the mix a statement made by Dietrich Bonhoeffer in his lectures on Christology given in Berlin during the 1930s. He notes that the two stories of Jesus birth and baptism stand together, with one concerning itself with the presence of the Word of God in Jesus, while the other is focused in the coming of the Word of God upon Jesus. He writes that “the manger directs our attention to the man, who is God; the baptism directs our attention, as we look at Jesus, to the God who calls.” He then goes on to say:

If we speak of Jesus Christ as God, we may not say of him that he is the representative of an idea of God, which possesses the characteristics of omniscience and omnipotence (there is no such thing as this abstract divine nature!); rather, we must speak of his weakness, his manger, his cross. This man is no abstract God. (John De Gruchy, Dietrich Bonhoeffer: Witness to Jesus Christ, pp. 116-117).

The texts for this Sunday take us directly into the Christmas story, and they remind us that the Christmas story, indeed the gospel story, isn’t the story of an abstract God-man.

The first word comes to Isaiah and is delivered to King Ahaz of Judah, who is told that God will give him a sign, but the king in a bit of false modesty declines the opportunity to test God’s faithfulness. But the prophet will not be put off, and so God will give him a sign anyway, and the sign will be this. A young woman will bear a son, and she will name him Emmanuel, which means “God with Us.” And before this child reaches the age of understanding good and evil, the land controlled by the kings whom Ahaz dreads will be deserted. In context, this is a word of hope to the people of Judah. The young woman could be Ahaz’s wife, and thus the mother of Hezekiah, or she could be Isaiah’s wife, for Isaiah speaks of his own children as “signs . . . from the Lord” (Is. 8:1). Although it’s easy to get caught up in the debate over whether Isaiah 7:14 is speaking of a virgin or simply a young woman without any reference to her sexual experience, if we do this we miss the point – God has offered a sign in the person of a child, a sign that reminds us that God is with us.

Before we move to the gospel lesson that builds upon Isaiah’s word of promise about God’s faithfulness in dealing with Judah’s enemies, we must stop and attend to Romans 1:1-7. Here in this opening section of Paul’s great letter to the Romans, in which he affirms his own call to be an apostle so that he might deliver the gospel that had been promised ages before through the prophets. This gospel concerns God’s son, who though descended from David in the flesh (note there is nothing here about an extraordinary birth), but who is then declared Son of God through the Resurrection from the dead. And the calling to which Paul has been called is to bring the Gentiles into a position of obedience “for the sake of his name,” for they belong to Jesus Christ. Again the text lends itself to debate. One wonders whether this emphasis on the resurrection being the point at which the Son of David becomes Son of God could signal an adoptionist Christology. That is, God chooses to adopt Jesus as his son – either at baptism or in the resurrection. But as Bonhoeffer reminds us these events are all connected and thus fighting over whether this is an adoptionist perspective again misses the point – God us chosen to be present in Christ.

And so we come to the gospel lesson, wherein Isaiah’s “young woman” gives way to the Septuagint’s translation of the Hebrew almah into the Greek parthenos (virgin). The message is this. Joseph was going to put away his betrothed because she was pregnant, and apparently he was the father. He was a kind and gentle man so he didn’t take the option of putting her away publicly. But as he contemplated this action, an angel appears in a dream and tells him: “fear not,” go ahead and get married to Mary, just as you planned, for this child is from the Holy Spirit. The focus isn’t on the how, but on the sign. This young woman, not yet fully married, and probably very young is pregnant, and that means she has broken her vows (or, more likely had been raped, perhaps by a Roman soldier). Joseph was fully in his rights to set her aside, but he was a good and gentle man and so he chose not to do so, and now the angel gives him further instructions. Get married, have the baby, and name him Jesus (Yeshua), for he will save the people from their sins. He will do this to fulfill the word of Isaiah, that a “virgin shall conceive and bear a son, and they will name him Emmanuel.” And so it happened, and Joseph refrained from engaging in sexual relations with his wife until the son was born, and they named him Jesus. The message once again is this: “God is with us.”  And because God is with us, there is hope, even a world full of darkness -- as Matthew's gospel quickly reminds us in the story of the slaughter of the Innocents.  But that text is still ahead of us.  Now, the message is this:  Fear Not!

There is much going on in these texts that require our careful attention. They have a powerful message of God’s abiding presence, not in abstract form or in typical human power relationships, but rather in weakness, as Bonhoeffer points out in a manger and on a cross.

Take Courage -- A Lectionary Meditation

Haggai 2:1-9


2 Thessalonians 2:1-5, 13-17

Luke 20:27-38

Take Courage

Theologian Paul Tillich believed that courage and being were inextricably related. He writes:

Courage as a human act, as a matter of valuation is an ethical concept. Courage as the universal and essential self-affirmation of one’s being is an ontological concept. The courage to be is the ethical act in which man affirms his own being in spite of those elements of his existence which conflict with his essential self-affirmation. (Tillich, Courage to Be, Yale University Press, 1952, pp. 2-3).

Tillich’s definition may sound a bit abstract, but he reminds us that courage is something that is expressed from the very center of our being in the midst of trying circumstances. We go on with life, despite the realities that press against us. As the Spiritual puts it: “Like a tree planted by the water, I shall not be moved.”

The theme of courage filters through our three texts, though the word isn’t always used directly. It is, however, stated quite clearly in the word that comes to Haggai the prophet. God sends the prophet to give a word of encouragement to the governor of Judea and the High Priest. It is the post-exilic period. The people have returned to the land and have begun rebuilding the Temple, but the times are difficult, the challenges many, and the memories of another day, a day of glory, still linger in the minds of some. This people is, by the prophet’s own estimation, no more than a remnant, a runt of what once was a people of importance. It would be easy for them to slip away and let the world pass them by. But the Lord of Hosts says to the leaders of the people: “Take courage . . .; work for I am with you, says the Lord of hosts, according to the promise that I made you when you came out of Egypt. My Spirit abides among you; do not fear” (vs. 4-5). The prophet goes on to declare that God will do great things and restore them to glory, but the very fact that he encourages them to get to work now is important, for it takes courage to continue on when all the signs seem against you. The pundits say it can’t be done, but the promise is there – God says, I am with you, so don’t be afraid!

As we move to the reading from the epistle we again encounter a people who are afraid, people who aren’t sure of the future. Could it be that the end has come and they’ve been left behind? More importantly, in the face of difficult times, be strong, don’t be alarmed – these things will happen. But, as for you, “give thanks to God.” Why, because you are the first fruits of salvation. You’ve been called by God to proclaim the good news. That’s your purpose – so “stand firm, hold fast.” To what are they to hold fast? It is to the tradition passed on to them by the founders of the church in Thessalonica. It is in this word that they shall find comfort and hope and strength. Take courage, because God will strengthen your hearts with every good work and word. Yes, stand firm – “like a tree planted by the water.”

And why should we take courage? Why should we stand firm in the face of adversity and opposition? According to Luke, we are a resurrection people. The passage from Luke tells of Jesus’ encounter with the Sadducees, a rather conservative, traditional party that one could say is “religious without being spiritual.” They are tied to the institution, for there really is nothing else. They find the idea of resurrection folly and seek to deride Jesus (and the others in the community, including the Pharisees, who take hope in the resurrection). Jesus goes into some detail refuting their charges, taking them into the Torah, those first five books of the Hebrew Bible that the Sadducees embraced, and showed them clearly that the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, is the God of the living and not the dead.”

And what word can we take from Luke’s summation of this encounter? It is, I believe, in the reminder that we can take courage, we can stand firm, because God is the God of the Living and not the Dead. It is the power of the resurrection that stands as a witness to us that we’re not alone in this world. Therefore, we need not fear, no matter what waves crash against us, “I shall not be moved.”

Reposted from [D]mergent