Will Rice- Sermon #17 - Come and See

Rev. Will Rice
Grace United Methodist Church
Corpus Christi, TX
pastorwillrice@gmail.com

John 1:43-51

“Come and See”

When I was a radio disc jockey, businesses use to pay me a lot of money to do something called a remote broadcast. I would head on down to, for example, the local Chevrolet dealer, and three times and hour, for sixty seconds, I would say something like, “Come on down to Outten Chevrolet in Allentown! You have to come and see the deals they have today! They have the lowest prices in town on new Chevrolet cars, trucks and SUVs. Come and see the best deals in town!”

These businesses could have just run sixty-second commercials, but they paid a lot more money to get me to come down and they did so for a very specific reason. I did the afternoon program on WZZO in Allentown for a number of years. People who liked rock music in The Lehigh Valley of Pennsylvania heard my voice every afternoon on their way home from work. For good or bad, my voice had credibility. When I said, “come and see” people came and saw.

I love this piece of scripture. I think that nearly everybody can find themselves in it. You may find who you are, who you want to be, or even who you wish you weren’t sometimes.

We have Philip, the Bible’s foremost expert on church growth. Just moments after Jesus has said “follow me,” Philip is inviting Nathanael to church! We, as a church, would have never asked Philip to do that. We would call that “evangelism” and we reserve that for more experienced Christians. We never expect that of new people, but instead leave it to those with some training.

What about Nathanael. Maybe you don’t see yourself in Nathanael, but I do and we can all learn something from him. Nathanael is the typical cynic. “Can anything good come out of Nazareth?” I remember as a young person answering an invitation to church with “Can anything good come out of the church?” A modern day Nathanael might say, “All the church is interested in is my money!” or “The church is just a bunch of hypocrites!”

If we can see ourselves in this interaction, if we can take anything from it, it is how Philip, this man who has just started following Jesus moments ago, handles Nathanael’s objection.

“Can anything good come out of Nazareth?”

Put yourself in that place. How would you answer that objection?

“Can anything good come out of Nazareth?”

If someone really knew the Hebrew scriptures, they might argue scripturally. “Of course something good can come out of Nazareth, I can show you the words of the prophets that will show you that the Messiah shall come from Nazareth.”[1] But Philip didn’t do that.

Someone else, especially someone like Philip, who just starting following Jesus, may react defensively, “How dare you question the credentials of the Messiah?” But Philip didn’t do that.

Another person might try to turn it around on the person, “What the heck do you know?” But Philip didn’t do that.

I am sure someone else would just give up. But Philip didn’t do that.

Philip simply said, “Come and see.”

“Come see for yourself!”

When I did a remote broadcast, I didn’t answer possible objections. I didn’t get into the specifics of the price of a new Tahoe or the trade in value of someone’s ’89 Cavalier. Sometimes businesses would want me to talk specifics. I always talked them out of it. I always told them, what I really needed to say was come and see.

Think about it in modern terms. You tell someone about church and they say, “What good can come out of the church?”

You could pull out your Bible and quote them scripture. You could get defensive. You could try to turn it around on them. You could just give up. Or, you could say, “Come and see.”

Here is the really scary part, what Nathanael did next,

^46bPhilip said to him, “Come and see.” ⁴⁷When Jesus saw Nathanael coming toward him

Philip said, “Come and see!” and Nathanael did!

Back when I was a D.J. and I did those remote broadcasts, I always had to be careful about where I chose to go and do a broadcast from. If I said, “Come and see! Outten Chevrolet has the best deals in town” and people came and saw and were treated poorly or paid way too much for a new car, the next time I said “Come and see” they might say, “no, I tried that once.”

My credibility was on the line. For me, at the time, my credibility was worth money. If I kept saying “Come and see!” and people came and saw and were disappointed, after a while no one would come and no business would pay me to go there and say “come and see!”

In today’s passage, Philip is risking his credibility with Nathanael. He says “Come and see” because he believes once Nathanael sees, he will understand. Let’s see how that works out for him.

⁴⁷When Jesus saw Nathanael coming toward him, he said of him, “Here is truly an Israelite in whom there is no deceit!” ⁴⁸Nathanael asked him, “Where did you get to know me?” Jesus answered, “I saw you under the fig tree before Philip called you.” ⁴⁹Nathanael replied, “Rabbi, you are the Son of God! You are the King of Israel!”

This works out pretty well for Philip because Nathanael has and encounter with Jesus, and experience of the living Christ. Jesus greets him, embraces him for who he is, and says, “I have been expecting you!

If we were pretty sure that was going to happen when we said “Come and see!” perhaps we would say it more.

When I talk to people about inviting people to come to church, I hear lots of reasons not to. People say that they are uncomfortable talking about religion or they are afraid they are going to offend someone, but I think that a lot of what is going on is about fear of losing credibility. You may know the joy of knowing God through Christ, of having a church family, of being involved in fellowship and in mission. You know that your friend or loved one would feel the same way, if she or he could truly experience it when they came to church

Has anyone ever invited someone to church and had them come? This may not be true for everyone, but I bet for some of you found yourself nervous the day that came. The people we tend to invite are our friends and family and coworkers, people who may have accepted our invitation because we have some amount of credibility.

I probably invited more people to church before I was a pastor than I do now, because I worked with and hung out with a lot more people who weren’t already members of my church. When I would invite them to “Come and see” and they did I would be exceptionally nervous at church that day. As I drove in, I would look at the parking lot. I hope there is a spot. If my friend gets up early on a Sunday and comes down here and doesn’t find a place to park, I really blew it. As I would walk in, I would look to see who the greeters were. I hope they are our best greeters. I hope they are paying attention so my friend isn’t greeted by someone’s back. At the church I was at the time, I would hope it wasn’t raining so there wouldn’t be a garbage can in the isle to catch the leak from the roof, I so wanted it to look like we had our act together. I would scan the bulletin to see which pastor was preaching, what was the text. Had I seen the pastor around the office that week, had they put any time into this sermon? What is the choir singing? I hope our best soprano isn’t away on vacation this week. I would look at the hymns hoping were weren’t singing the hard ones that nobody knew.

I was a nervous wreck, because my credibility was on the line and I knew that the person I had invited might be as cynical as Nathanael. Perhaps the person trusted my credibility, perhaps my friend trusted me enough personally to “come and see.” However, that didn’t mean they weren’t still asking, “Can anything good come out of Nazareth?” “Can anything good come out of the church.”

They might want to trust me, but part of them is just looking for confirmation of what they had already believed. When Nathanael had followed Philip to Jesus, Jesus reacted with:

⁴⁷When Jesus saw Nathanael coming toward him, he said of him, “Here is truly an Israelite in whom there is no deceit!”

Imagine if instead, Jesus didn’t show up that day, or Jesus was in a bad mood, or Jesus disciples were all standing around blocking the way. Nathanael response would have likely been, “See, I told you nothing good could come out of Nazareth!” And he would have never listened to Philip again.

Think about how that works out in our context. What if someone says “come and see” and someone listens and they come and there is nowhere to park? Or what if they can’t find the right entrance or can’t find the way to the sanctuary or can’t find a place to sit, or a place to sit that isn’t right up front with the pastors or in between two people they have never met? Us, “church folks” have trouble getting that, because we know there is always “somewhere” to park. And if we are visiting a church and can’t find the door, we just ask someone, no problem. And it doesn’t matter if the only seats are right up front or if we have to sit right next to someone we have never met.

But think about Nathanael,

“Can anything good come out of Nazareth?”

He is almost looking for an excuse not to come! A cynical person, who has only accepted the invitation on someone’s credibility, is still looking for an excuse not to come. “There’s nowhere to park, I can’t find the door, I can’t find a seat.” A cynical person may be looking for an excuse not to come. We have to make sure they don’t have one.

The outside invitation to “come and see” must be followed up with the welcome here at the church that says, “we have been expecting you and YOU are welcome here, just the way you are.” Not just a welcome from a person at the door, but a welcome that is built into a very DNA. A welcome that reflects our name, Grace. A welcome that says we accept you for who you are, wherever you are, no matter what.

Oftentimes people suggest to me the idea of a church open house, a time to invite our friends and members of the community to come to the church. When churches do these sorts of things, they usually go all out. They mow the lawn and trim the hedges and maybe even paint the trim. They vacuum the carpet and pick up all the stuff that is laying around the church. They put out some food and drinks and when the people come, they make sure that they are greeted by a smiling face and a warm handshake.

When people suggest the idea of an open house to me, I usually say no. I say no because every Sunday is an open house. Every Sunday is a day when someone may be responding to the invitation “come and see” and every Sunday is a day that we have to do everything we can to say, “we have been expecting you and YOU are welcome here, just the way you are.”

You may have already heard something about our Welcoming Team. Some of you have been praying for them. You may think about a welcoming team as just a group of people who stand and welcome people to the church or who puts ads in the newspaper, but this team is a whole lot more than that. This team is working to make welcoming part of the DNA of the church. They are working to make sure that we are doing all that we can to make sure that when someone “comes to see” that we will not stand in the way of their opportunity to experience Christ, but instead open our arms to welcome them and make them feel welcome and comfortable. I want every member to be aware of this group because the work they do will, in some ways, affect everything we do here at Grace and it should. At some point something they do might even get on your nerves and that might be a good thing. They might ask you to do something you are not used to doing. Or, they might move something or change something. They may even ask you to sit in a different place!

They will look at everything from how the church looks to new visitors, to how we personally welcome them to how we let them know more about this church, to how we begin to integrate them into the life of the church. They will try to see through the eyes of first time visitors and see things that we do, that we don’t even realize that we do that may put off people coming here to see God.

They are going to help us do the work of treating every Sunday like an open house, making sure we are always ready for someone new to enter our doors! Then it will be our turn to be like Philip and say to someone, “Come and see!”

If you have any thoughts, questions or comments on this sermon, click here to return to Will's weblog and post a comment.

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[1] Matthew 2:23 reads, “There he made his home in a town called Nazareth, so that what had been spoken through the prophets might be fulfilled, ‘He will be called a Nazorean.’" However, there is no specific OT passage the corresponds to this citation.

Will Rice- Sermon #16 - Servants of Christ: First Steps, Next Steps

Rev. Will Rice
Grace United Methodist Church
Corpus Christi, TX
pastorwillrice@gmail.com

James 1:22

Today is the final Sunday of our three week emphasis on stewardship of service. I said this same thing last week, but let me say it again: the point of this is not just to find volunteers to fill all the positions within the church. The point is that God is calling us to be in service and that through joyful service in God’s name, we can be the salt of the earth, spreading God’s love and transforming the world that surrounds us.

Since this is the final week of this emphasis, I thought I would get right down to the real nuts and bolts of this thing. Honestly, there are about a billion reasons not to be a servant.

Often when I preach, I can imagine in my head what a lot of people are thinking. Don’t worry, I can’t actually hear what you are thinking, so if your mind is elsewhere, I don’t actually know where it is (but God does). But I can imagine that a lot of people are thinking to themselves, “well that is all fine and good… but.”

Usually I just let those buts hang out there, but today, with the help of scripture, I am going to hit them head on.

I think that most of us get that we are supposed to be doing something. Maybe. Let’s start today with the most complex excuse for not serving.

I am made right with God through faith (believing) not by doing.

If that is the reason you use for not serving, congratulations! Your excuse is theologically sound!

Ephesians 2:8 For by grace you have been saved through faith, and this is not your own doing; it is the gift of God.

Do you think I am running around spending my life sharing the Good news of God because I am trying to earn my salvation? Absolutely not! I am running around sharing the Gospel because I know that God already loves me.

This is one of those places where are relentless pursuit spreading the word of Grace actually gets in our way. The most important thing to understand is that God loves us no matter what. Sometimes, we just stop there. But, as a response to that love, God wants, expects us to care for our brothers and sisters. God expects a response, a response that reflects that love and shares it with all who surround us. Repeating a piece of scripture I read last week from 1st John 3:

17How does God’s love abide in anyone who has the world’s goods and sees a brother or sister in need and yet refuses help? 18Little children, let us love, not in word or speech, but in truth and action.
And from today’s reading from the Letter of James:
James 1:22 But be doers of the word, and not merely hearers who deceive themselves.

I am not too worried about people using excuse number 1. If you truly believe that God loves you for you not matter what, it won’t be long before you start serving for God.

Let’s move on to some other reasons for not serving. I think these fall into two categories, which I will call for reason of simplicity, “I am not good enough” and “I am already good enough.” Let’s start with the first one. A lot of people, when they do realize that God is calling on them to respond to the grace of God with action think, “I am not good enough.”

This can manifest itself in a lot of ways, some of them practical, as in “I am just not equipped for this ministry,” some of them more personal as in “I am not good or righteous enough for this ministry.”

Matthew 4:18 18As he walked by the Sea of Galilee, he saw two brothers, Simon, who is called Peter, and Andrew his brother, casting a net into the sea-- for they were fishermen. 19And he said to them, "Follow me, and I will make you fish for people." 20Immediately they left their nets and followed him.

What has always bothered me about this story is the “Immediately they left their nets and followed him.” Wasn’t there a training session? Didn’t they go to seminary first? Think about what their resumes looked like.

I have tried to use this excuse myself, many, many times and my first time wasn’t that long ago. If you look on my office wall, just a couple of feet from the piece of paper that says I am probationary member of the Annual Conference and therefore have authority to do all the pastor things I do, is another piece of paper saying that I was baptized on January 16th 2000. On the day that I got that piece of paper, I man in my church, Steve, came up to me and said, “So, are you ready to get to work?” To which I replied something like, “um, uh, well…” He said “Great, you can start next week.”

Steve then told me (he would claim he asked me) that I was going to be a Sunday School Superintendent. All I had to do was collect attendance sheets and offerings and make sure all the children’s classes had graham crackers and ice water. I was terrified! I thought for sure I would somehow mess it up. In my full-time job, I was producing live radio shows in eight different cities every day. I was on the air in Lufkin, Amarillo, Lubbock, Waco Corpus Christi and Tyler, Texas; Pensacola, Florida; Modesto, California; Greenville, South Carolina, Yuma, Arizona; able to keep track of play lists of top-40 songs, oldies, country and rock, making sure Pensacola didn’t get Greenville’s weather forecast and making sure the folks in Modesto weren’t hearing about Sea Sculptures in Corpus Christi. That was no problem. The thought of being responsible for graham crackers made me lose sleep at night.
But God provided, I took on the challenge, and I got it down to a science, counting the offering, tallying the attendance, getting the ice water in the right room. Then, one day, a teacher caught me in the hall and said, “Will, I have a misbehaving kid, will you help me out.” To which I smiled and said, “I don’t do that.” To which the teacher said, “Yes you do, you are the Sunday School Superintendent.”

Now, in case you don’t know, I am not a parent. At that point in my life, I had one niece who I saw about once a year. I knew nothing about children. Suddenly I was responsible for making one behave.

I got through that, I have gotten through a number of unexpected challenges in trying be a faithful servant. Do not think that you can’t follow your heart into ministry because you are not qualified. God calls people who are not qualified all the time. Just read the gospels. The disciples are nearly comical in their lack of qualifications, yet, obviously they did something right or we probably wouldn’t be here.

Sometimes we feel we are not equipped, sometimes it is a more personal issue where we, consciously or unconsciously feel that we are not good enough or worthy enough or righteous enough to serve.

The prophet Isaiah certainly felt this way when, in a vision, he came face to face with God.

Isaiah 6:5

5And I said: "Woe is me! I am lost, for I am a man of unclean lips, and I live among a people of unclean lips; yet my eyes have seen the King, the LORD of hosts!"

I remember the first time I was asked to preach. It was actually before I went to seminary, but I had already decided I felt called to be a pastor. I remember being asked because for some reason, part of my brain decided to make me act all confident and I said, “yeah, I would love to.” Meanwhile the other side of my brain was saying, “What? Why are you saying that? Who said you could speak?”

For me, getting up in front of the congregation to preach the Gospel was not a practical issue. I had the technical ability to do it. I had been a disc jockey for ten year. I knew how to talk, both on the radio and at public events. I wasn’t even that worried about writing the sermon. They say everybody has at least one good sermon in them.

For me, it was an issue of worthiness. How is it that I am good enough to stand in front of a bunch of people who have been Christians their whole life and pretend to proclaim the news of God?

9As Jesus was walking along, he saw a man called Matthew sitting at the tax booth; and he said to him, "Follow me." And he got up and followed him.

When you are considering your own worthiness to be God’s servant, you have to consider Matthew. Surrounded by the religious elite, those who spent their whole lives trying to be righteous and perfect in God’s eyes, Jesus calls one who would be considered anything but righteous. We are tempted to compare Matthew to a modern tax collector. That doesn’t quite work. We don’t like tax collectors today because we don’t like paying taxes, but they are mostly honest, not especially wealthy people. In Jesus day, a tax collector was a thief, collecting tax for Rome and collecting enough extra to build his own wealth at the expense of the poor. By anyone’s worldly standards Matthew was not righteous, but Jesus will choose who Jesus will choose. God will choose who God will choose.

I told you there were two main categories of reasons not to serve, “I am not good enough” and “I am already good enough.” Let’s look at that second one.

“I am already good enough” sounds a little self-righteous, but it is not always that extreme. A whole lot of us have said, either out loud or to ourselves, “I am already doing enough.” There are, indeed, times when that is true. Sometimes, in our zeal to serve, we take on too many things. We may get into “can’t say no” syndrome. This can be a real problem in any church, where a small number of people are responsible for most of the ministry because they keep taking on more and more. But sometimes doing more doesn’t mean adding on.

I remember when I first felt a call to full-time ministry. My general response was, “Aren’t I already doing enough?” I was Sunday School Superintendent, I was a lay-leader, I was active in the United Methodist Men, I sang in the choir. But, you see, God wasn’t calling me to tack on more things, but to do something different.

Wherever you are in ministry, it is possible that God is calling you to do more, additional things. It is also possible that God is calling you to do more, other things, even possibly giving up the things you are doing now.

But let me honest with you, wherever you are in ministry, it is very unlikely that the challenge of the Gospel is going to say, “Good enough.:

At the risk of tossing out one of the most challenging pieces of scripture in the New Testament right at the end of my sermon,

Luke 18:

18 A certain ruler asked him, ‘Good Teacher, what must I do to inherit eternal life?’ 19Jesus said to him, ‘Why do you call me good? No one is good but God alone. 20You know the commandments: “You shall not commit adultery; You shall not murder; You shall not steal; You shall not bear false witness; Honour your father and mother.” ’ 21He replied, ‘I have kept all these since my youth.’ 22When Jesus heard this, he said to him, ‘There is still one thing lacking. Sell all that you own and distribute the money to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven; then come, follow me.’ 23But when he heard this, he became sad; for he was very rich.

People get hung up on this because they think it is about money. But it is about more than money. It is making the point, no matter how good a job you think you are doing, there is more to do and God is going to call you to do it.

Which brings me to the last excuse I am going to cover today: “I am too busy.” You know what, you are right. You probably are too busy. I know I am. But, you know what, our busyness is our choice. There are things beyond our control. Perhaps we can’t work less, perhaps we have young children or aging parents that need our attention. But there are things we can control. We decide how much television to watch. We decide how much time we will spend on the internet. We decide what activities we or our children will participate in. We decide how much to buy and maintain and store. We decide how many hours we will spend worrying, fretting, planning procrastinating, blaming, hating, regretting, mistrusting, complaining…

Jesus was once asked:

36‘Teacher, which commandment in the law is the greatest?’ 37He said to him, ‘ “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind.” 38This is the greatest and first commandment. 39And a second is like it: “You shall love your neighbor as yourself.’”

It may seem like too much, but as Paul writes in his letter to the Philippians:

Philippians 4

12I know what it is to have little, and I know what it is to have plenty. In any and all circumstances I have learned the secret of being well-fed and of going hungry, of having plenty and of being in need. 13I can do all things through him who strengthens me.

Today is a big day at Grace. Today we will decide if we will let the excuses determine our ministry or if we will be a church on fire with ministry. Today we have a chance to commit ourselves to reaching in to serve and nurture each other, to reach out to spread God’s love to our neighbors here and around the world and to reach up and personally take that next step in ministry leadership that will take this church to a whole new level of ministry.

I have been very clear what the excuses are. I hope I have been clear that the Gospel will not let those excuses fly. Today, I invite you to embrace the possibilities, to step up and step out. Today, I invite us all to be doers of the word, and not merely hearers who deceive themselves.

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Your thought and comments are always welcome at willatgrace.blogspot.com.

Will Rice - Sermon #15 - Servants of Christ: Reaching Out to Serve

Rev. Will Rice
Grace United Methodist Church
Corpus Christi, TX
pastorwillrice@gmail.com

Matthew 5:13-16

You can ask any member of my Disciple I class, Bible study is hard work. One of the hardest parts of Bible study is putting aside what you think you already know about what scripture means so that you can actually listen to what it has to say. It is not necessarily our fault that we come to scripture with a whole lot of preconceived notions about what it means. Even as a person who didn’t grow up reading scripture or hearing sermons, I had some notions about what things meant. As people over the years have interpreted the Bible, their interpretations have become part of the collective conscious of Christians a non-Christians alike. Some of these interpretations work their way into the language of the culture. You don’t have to read the parable of the Good Samaritan to know what a Good Samaritan is. I never read the Bible but I knew what it meant to say someone “walks on water” or is a “doubting Thomas.”

You don’t need a Bible study to know what the phrase “salt of the earth means.” You can look it up in the dictionary, which I did. It is listed as an idiom. Being a little fuzzy on high school English, I then had to look up idiom.

id·i·om (d-m) n. A speech form or an expression of a given language that is peculiar to itself grammatically or cannot be understood from the individual meanings of its elements, as in keep tabs on.

Salt of the earth is an idiom that means “A person or group considered as the best or noblest part of society.”[1]

So, if I were to use the cultural understanding of this idiom to interpret the scripture from which it originally came, this would be a short sermon, I could say, “You are the salt of the earth! Congratulations! You have arrived!” I like the sound of that. They are very clear in seminary that you need to occasionally preach a “feel-good” sermon or people will stop liking you. I want people to like me so… “You are the salt of the earth! Congratulations! You have arrived!”

But, I am not so sure. What is salt anyway? Sodium Chloride is its chemical compound. I am not sure we think of salt the way that Jesus thought of salt. When I think of salt, I think of the stuff they used to melt the ice off the roads in my home in upstate New York. I also think of the chemical reaction that salt caused when it sat on the paint of my 1976 Datsun B-210. It caused oxidation leading to Iron Oxide, or rust, which led to pieces of my car falling off.

When I think of salt, I also hear my doctor’s voice in my head telling me not to eat so much of it, it is supposed to raise my blood pressure. When I think of salt, my heart is also strangely warmed when I think of all the things I like to put it on, especially French fries!

I think we can assume when Jesus speaks of salt, he is thinking of it in the positive way. In Jesus’ day and in the place where he lived salt was nearly as precious as Gold, though much more abundant. The Dead Sea area provided an abundance of salt through mines around the sea. One could also procure it simply by skimming some water out of the Dead Sea, putting it in a pan and letting the water evaporate leaving salt crystals behind.

Salt was precious because salt was life sustaining. Remember, people in Jesus time didn’t have refrigerators. Salt, because it was readily available, was an essential food preservative. Since most of us have refrigerators, we don’t do this much anymore, but meat soaked in a salt solution and then dried can last for months without refrigeration. The salt draws moisture out of the meat and kills the bacteria that normally makes it go bad. We tend to eat meat cured this way more as a delicacy than out of necessity. For people in Jesus’ day, without salt, food would spoil and there just wouldn’t be enough to eat.

Salt sustains.

You can imagine that a substance of this importance would start to gain, almost religious significance. This simple substance could stop rot and decay and help to preserve life-giving food. It may not seem so apparent to us in a time with frozen food and microwaves, but in Jesus’ time, it must have seemed almost mystical.

Now of course, it also didn’t take people long to figure out that this stuff makes things taste good. We now have so many cooking methods and sweeteners and spices that we tend to forget how miraculous salt can be. It is not the flavor of the salt, it is how it enhances the flavor of other things. Sometimes I will buy a wonderful piece of fish and cook it nice and slow on the grill and then bring it in and cut off a piece and it tastes like nothing. I then put just a dash of salt on it, and pow, the wonderful flavor of the fish and the smoke from the grill pop right out.

Salt seasons.

Imagine living in a time when cooking was pretty basic, done in a stone fire heated oven or over a simple open flame without any McCormick Grill Mates marinades or A1 Steak Sauce, salt was just plain miraculous.

The importance and value of salt is certainly attested to in the Bible. Job 6:6 reads:

⁶Can that which is tasteless be eaten without salt?

Its seasoning properties are referred to as far back as Exodus (Ex. 30:35) as salt was used to season the incense used in worship. According to Leviticus 2, all offerings made to God had to be seasoned with salt.

¹³You shall not omit from your grain offerings the salt of the covenant with your God; with all your offerings you shall offer salt.

Which is all a long way of saying, when Jesus said, “You are the salt of the earth;” he was saying quite a bit. I think with a deeper understanding of what salt would have meant to Jesus’ original audience, the idiomatic definition of salt of the earth as, “A person or group considered as the best or noblest part of society,” is quite limited, if not incorrect.

My contention is that this statement, “you are the salt of the earth,” is not a statement of status, but rather a statement of function.[2] I think this is immensely important so let me say it again. I believe the statement, “you are the salt of the earth,” is not a statement of status, but a statement of function.

Let me try to explain. If “you are the salt of the earth,” was a statement of status, I might say, as I did before “congratulations! (polite applause) You have arrived, you are the salt of the earth.”

If “you are the salt of the earth,” is a statement of function,” I might say, “we better get to work, we have a lot to do, we are supposed to be the salt of the earth.”

Now if being the salt of the earth is a statement of function, what are we supposed to do about it? You know a statement of function almost sounds like a mission statement. You know, I think we have one of those. It is Grace WINS, We Invite, Nurture, Serve.

Let’s think about it, what does salt do again? Salt sustains and salt seasons. Salt sustains life, it preserves food, it keeps bacteria from spoiling it. Salt seasons, we all know that one, it makes food taste better. How are we like salt? We sustain and we season this is our function. As Christ’s representatives in the world, we sustain life. We sustain it in two ways. First, and these are not in a particular order, We sustain life by sharing the Gospel, the good news of God in Jesus Christ. That is part of what we mean when we say we invite and nurture. Let me read you a line from the Gospel according to John 20:31:

³¹But these are written so that you may come to believe that Jesus is the Messiah,^* the Son of God, and that through believing you may have life in his name.

Second, we sustain life by providing for the least, the last, and the lost. That is what we are talking about when we say we serve. We sustain life by making sure that the people in our community, city, state country and world have enough to eat and drink, that they have clothes and shelter and a chance at life. 1 John 3

¹⁷How does God’s love abide in anyone who has the world’s goods and sees a brother or sister^* in need and yet refuses help? ¹⁸Little children, let us love, not in word or speech, but in truth and action.

Salt sustains and salt seasons, the second half of that, seasoning means we are to, our function also is to season the world. Let me read you a quote:

Have you looked at these Christians closely? Hollow-eyed, pale-cheeked, flat breasted all; they brood their lives away, unspurred by ambition; the sun shines for them, but they do not see it; the earth offers them its fullness, but they desire it no; all their desire is to renounce and to suffer that they may come to die.”[3]

That was written by Roman emperor Julian who took the throne after Constantine had made Christianity the religion of the Roman empire. Author Oliver Wendell Holmes once said, “I might have entered the ministry if certain clergymen I knew had not looked and acted so much like undertakers.”[4]

Well thank goodness that isn’t true anymore…

¹³"You are the salt of the earth; but if salt has lost its taste, how can its saltiness be restored? It is no longer good for anything, but is thrown out and trampled under foot.

Well, here at Grace we are a pretty lively bunch, but I have to tell you, we have to think about perception. I can tell you from experience that young, unchurched folks think we are boring with a capital B. Now that may simply be a perception problem, but it is our perception problem.

Salt sustains and salt seasons. If we are to truly be the salt of the earth we must “discover the lost radiance of the Christian faith.” This should be exciting. It should be so exciting that people look at us and can’t help but wonder what the heck we are doing.

If we were more like habanero peppers and less like salt free all purpose food seasoning, we probably wouldn’t have to worry as much about evangelism because people would be coming to us to see what was going on.

Salt sustains and seasons. These two are intricately linked. It is through our actions as sustainers that we season. It is not as if we need to spend part of our time out bringing life and hope and part of our time being exciting. They are indeed one and the same.

Salt sustains and seasons.

I have to tell you, my first few weeks here at Grace were a little overwhelming. It seems I walked in during the middle of a little thing called Sea City Work Camp. Since I was so new and was still trying to find the bathroom and unpack my books, I was not much help to the youth and adults who were out in the sun every day repairing homes, replacing roofs and expressing God’s love to people in need in word and action. I got to watch and take it all in as they would all come back exhausted and exhilarated. They were invigorated by the life sustaining they were a part of and they were invigorating to watch.

Salt sustains and salt seasons.

You know, I spend a lot of time up here and in the classroom trying to be the one to share the gospel and teach the gospel and motivate others to accept and spread the good news, but here in the evening, watching those youth and adults reflecting upon what they did during the day, I was the recipient of the salty seasoning of their sustaining service.

Salt sustains and salt seasons.

Today is a day where if you realize that you want to be a part of sustaining and seasoning you can find how. Today is the second Sunday of our emphasis on stewardship of service. Some people misunderstand the goal of such a thing. They think that we, as church leadership are just look for volunteers to fill all the positions at the church. I will tell you honestly, if that was what church was all about, I would find something else to do with my time. This is about being the salt of the earth, this is about sustaining and seasoning ministries through which we reach out to each other and the world surrounding us to spread the love of God in word and deed and in doing so, radiate the love and joy that comes only from truly being active in the work of God.

Salt sustains and salt seasons.

In the list of ministries that you can commit to, ministries that you can learn more about in the glassway today, there is something that will not only bring God’s grace to someone else, there is something that will make your heart sing while you do it. It may be in feeding the homeless through Metro Ministries Loves and Fishes. It may be showing prison inmates that God’s love extends to them too through Kairos Prison Ministry. Maybe you are called to visit people who can’t come to church or who are in the hospital. You might be ready to help make Sea City possible touching the lives of our neighbors and the youth who serve. Some of you may be called to help with the All-Star mentoring program which gives local kids a better chance at life by connecting them with another adult they can look up to.

Maybe you won’t find anything among the ministries we offer. it may be that God has put something else on your heart. You might be being called to get Grace church involved in something new and there is a box on the commitment cards to check to talk to us about that.

You are the salt of the earth! That is our function, our sustaining and seasoning commission to bring life, to bring the good news of Christ to the world both through our actions and by the invigorating example those actions set.

You are the salt of the earth; you are the light of the world. Through all this, may to God be the Glory.

---

[1] The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition
Copyright © 2000 by Houghton Mifflin Company.
Published by Houghton Mifflin Company. All rights reserved.

[2] Douglas R.A. Hare, Interpretation, A Bible Commentary for Teaching and Preaching, Matthew, (Louisville: John Knox Press, 1993) 44

[3] Roman Emporer Julian, as quoted in, William Barclay, The Daily Bible Study Series, The Gospel of Matthew. Volume 1, (Phildadelphia: The Westminster Press, 1956-58) 116

[4] Ibid., 116

Will Rice - Sermon #14 - Broken Glass and Wise Men

Rev. Will Rice
Grace United Methodist Church
Corpus Christi, TX
pastorwillrice@gmail.com

Matthew 2:1-12

This year, in an attempt to not fall off a ladder, I lined my front walk with Christmas lights. I think it turned out rather pretty. However, if you have been by the parsonage during the last few evenings, you may have noticed that the lights are out. It is not that I am done with Christmas, it is that my neighbor’s dog keeps running through my yard, tripping on the lights, pulling the stakes out of the lawn and breaking the bulbs.

As I was bent over in front of the house the other morning, reconnecting cords and picking up glass, I realized that those lights and that dog were a perfect metaphor (simile) for how the Christmas season tends to go. The weeks surrounding Christmas are full of beautiful light. As we string up lights and put up trees our hearts are lit up with the blessing of family, the joy of giving and receiving gifts, that special magic brought on by the sights and sounds of Christmas. And without fail, for someone, sometimes for everyone, something comes crashing through the yard breaking all the Christmas lights.

I will never forget last Christmas. I hadn’t even opened all my presents before I heard the terrible news, news that just kept getting worse, news of a wave so big and powerful that it would take days before we were even able to judge the scope of its impact. In an instant as I watched CNN Sunday morning the December 26th, Christmas was over. To be honest, it didn’t happen in an instant. Like many of you, the first time I heard the news it didn’t sink in. The human mind is an amazing thing. When we hear news of this magnitude, our mind tends to protect us. I don’t think it quite sunk in until about Tuesday. Whatever the precise moment it really sunk in, the joyful, innocent wonder of Christmas was pulled right out from under me.

Silent night, holy night, all is calm, all is bright… didn’t seem as appropriate any more as counts of the dead surpassed 100,000.

It is not usually of that level of drama or magnitude, but that sort of thing happens every year. Christmas is interrupted by the death of loved ones and sudden illnesses. Firefighters are called out on Christmas day to try and help save everything a family owns from flames. Because Christmas falls at the end of the year, people often return to work after celebrating with their family only to find out their job is being eliminated as of the first of the year.

I think that this day of the Christmas celebration and this piece of scripture are both important in how we understand the coming of Christ into the world around us. There is a big temptation to just lump the wise men in with the rest of the Christmas story and move on. But there is important stuff here.

Today, we celebrate what is technically the last Sunday of Christmas, The Epiphany of the Lord. On this day, we recount a story that, even for people who don’t go to church much, we all know pretty well. For many, it is just the frosting on the cake of the Christmas story. The three mystical wise men come and present the baby Jesus with wonderful gifts. Through the years, tradition has added quite a bit to the scripture. We decided that there were three men somewhere along the way. It makes sense, there were three gifts. In the sixth century we even gave them names, Melchior, Caspar and Balthasar.

Today we celebrate the Epiphany of the Lord a Christian celebration older than Christmas itself. Before we look more closely at the text, let’s look at the word epiphany. It comes from the Greek word epiphinea which means manifestation or appearance. So we are celebrating the appearance of God in Jesus Christ, as we say at Christmas, Emmanuel, which means God with us. What is interesting is how this word has come to be used in modern English:

A comprehension or perception of reality by means of a sudden intuitive realization.[1]

As in “I just had an epiphany!” Let me give you an example of this. My wife and I have different opinions regarding coffee. She thinks it is a warm, tasty, morning beverage. I think it is a vehicle for delivering caffeine. Therefore, she likes decaf and I like caffeinated coffee. For some time, we compromised. We would take some decaf coffee beans and some caffeinated coffee beans and mix them together to make a sort of half and half concoction. The result was that my wife Alisha ended up having more caffeine than she really needed and I ended up having way less. Then one day, I had an epiphany! I realized we could have two coffee makers! Ever since, we have both been much happier and our marriage has been much stronger.

But the Epiphany we celebrate today is a little more important than mine.

In the time of King Herod, after Jesus was born in Bethlehem of Judea, wise men from the East came to Jerusalem, ²asking, ‘Where is the child who has been born king of the Jews? For we observed his star at its rising, and have come to pay him homage.’

Alright, who came from the East? Wise men? Three Kings? Magi? The Greek text actually says magoi, which really refers to some sort of magician/priest/astrologer. I don’t know if “wise men” is very descriptive. They have just gone to King Herod, a very powerful, paranoid and violent man, who considers himself “King of the Jews” as well he should, he was given that title by Rome. These “wise men” have gone to this “King of the Jews” and asked him for directions to find some new “King of the Jews.” As I like to point out to my wife, bad things happen when men ask for directions.

King Herod did what powerful, paranoid rulers do when threatened. He panicked.

³When King Herod heard this, he was frightened, and all Jerusalem with him;

All of Jerusalem with him, because they knew how wicked his temper could be. After all, Herod was already known for many executions during his rise to power and reign including those of his own wife and children. Jerusalem was not frightened at the thought of a new king; they were frightened at the thought of what their current king might do in response. And that fright was well founded, if we read on in Matthew’s gospel, we hear how Herod struck out in panic.

While what Herod would eventually do was quite violent, what he did first was just sneaky and deceitful.

⁷Then Herod secretly called for the wise men and learned from them the exact time when the star had appeared. ⁸Then he sent them to Bethlehem, saying, ‘Go and search diligently for the child; and when you have found him, bring me word so that I may also go and pay him homage.’

Herod had no intention of paying homage, he wanted the threat to his power destroyed! But due to the intervention of a messenger, Herod’s evil plan would be thwarted:

¹²And having been warned in a dream not to return to Herod, they left for their own country by another road.

Christmas is a time for celebration, so it is tempting to end here, thanking God for intervening against Herod’s evil plan! But there is more to this story.

In the tradition of the Catholic Church, December 28^th, just three days after Christmas is observed as Holy Innocents day, which recognizes what Matthew talks about next. Even in our own tradition, last year year, it was assigned to be read the Sunday after, the very day after Christmas, which I did, though I am not sure how it went.

¹³Now after they had left, an angel of the Lord appeared to Joseph in a dream and said, "Get up, take the child and his mother, and flee to Egypt, and remain there until I tell you; for Herod is about to search for the child, to destroy him." ¹⁴Then Joseph got up, took the child and his mother by night, and went to Egypt, ¹⁵and remained there until the death of Herod. This was to fulfill what had been spoken by the Lord through the prophet, "Out of Egypt I have called my son." ¹⁶When Herod saw that he had been tricked by the wise men, he was infuriated, and he sent and killed all the children in and around Bethlehem who were two years old or under, according to the time that he had learned from the wise men.

Those wonderful, peaceful images portrayed in our Christmas carols: O little town of Bethlehem, how still we see thee lie, above thy deep and dreamless sleep, the silent stars go by... are being shattered by this not suited for all audiences, senseless violence.

Just like the feeling I had when the news of the terrible tragedy of the tsunami sunk in, just like many feel when the telephone rings with horrible news, the joyful, innocent wonder of Christmas is pulled right out from under me. In the true context of Matthew’s gospel, just like in the true context of the world we live in, Christmas is not the sugar coated, candy cane, fluffy snow story tradition has made it. It is true hope of Emmanuel, God with us even in and especially in a broken and hurting world.

9 When they had heard the king, they set out; and there, ahead of them, went the star that they had seen at its rising, until it stopped over the place where the child was. ¹⁰When they saw that the star had stopped, they were overwhelmed with joy. ¹¹On entering the house, they saw the child with Mary his mother; and they knelt down and paid him homage. Then, opening their treasure chests, they offered him gifts of gold, frankincense, and myrrh.

This is the epiphany. This moment that Jesus is manifested, made real to these wise men. In the context of their broken, dangerous world, a world in which Herod had tried to trick them into revealing the location of this new king, a world in which Herod wished to use that information to bring harm to this new baby king, a world in which a lot of innocent children lost their lives as a result, “they were overwhelmed with joy.” And, “they knelt down and paid him homage,” and “offered him gifts of gold, frankincense, and myrrh.”

You see my metaphor of the dog and the Christmas lights in technically flawed. It is not the reality of our world crashing into and disrupting Christmas, it is Christmas crashing into, breaking into the reality of our world. It is more like those Christmas lights just jumped right out in front of that poor dog.

Think about that image for a moment. With all that is going on, these men are kneeling down and presenting gifts to a helpless baby.

This can change our whole perspective. Instead of seeing those harsh realities that barge into our lives as intrusions into and a derailing of our celebration of Christmas, perhaps we can realize that it is Christmas, it is Christ that is barging into those harsh realities.

I do have an epiphany. I do have a manifestation that brings me hope even in the midst of personal, societal, even global suffering. I know from the context of Christ’s birth, the context of Christ’s life and the context of Christ’s suffering death and resurrection, that Christmas is not a story that can be interrupted by the realities of our world, but Christmas celebrates the epiphany, the manifestation of God into the realities of our world. And this, gives us hope in the midst of despair, light in the midst of darkness.

Because of Christ, because of Christmas, because God is with us.

Glory to God. Amen

---

[1] The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition Copyright © 2000 by Houghton Mifflin Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Company. All rights reserved.

Will Rice - Sermon #13 - Christmas Day - Rejoice

Rev. Will Rice
Grace United Methodist Church
Corpus Christi, TX
pastorwillrice@gmail.com

Psalm 96
Luke 2:1-14

“Rejoice”

For a pastor every Sunday is a challenge. It is a challenge because each and every week we are faced with doing a number of different things in worship. If you to ask me to name the primary purpose of worship, I would probably say that it is about expressing our love and reverence to God, praising God. But we all know it is much more complicated than that. The word in Greek that we most often translate as worship (proskewneyoh) conveys a meaning of bowing down before. The word in Hebrew (ahvad) conveys more of a sense of serving. In worship we do these things and more. We praise God, we bow down before God in prayer and in confession, we serve, or at least we reflect upon how we do and should serve. We also experience the mystery of God in the sacraments of baptism and Holy Communion. And there is more.

Because, for many, worship is the primary, if not only contact with the church, we teach. We teach in order that we may expand our faith and deepen our relationship with God. We teach, not only through the words of the sermon, but through everything we do. The songs usually not only lift praise to God, their words can teach us about God. The words and actions of our sacraments tell about God. Even the place we worship teaches. Stained glass is more than just beautiful decoration. The images in the glass teach us about our faith in pictures.

If that were not enough, worship can be evangelism, in the true sense of the word, meaning to spread the good news of the Gospel. Worship can be a place where people for the first time or again can experience call of God on their lives and reach back toward the outreached hand of God.

Somehow the pastor, and this only works with God’s help, has to pull all these things and more together into something that makes some sort of sense and doesn’t go much over an hour. But I think on Christmas day, the challenge is a little less. Christmas day may be the one day where we can make worship simply about rejoicing and absorbing the wonder of Christmas.

But as good as that sounds, it can be kind of hard for a pastor to do. If I just read you the Christmas story again and say, “let’s just rejoice in the good news of the birth of Christ!” I am left wondering if I have done a disservice. As a teacher, I am wondering if we all know what that means, as an evangelist, I am wondering if that is enough for those searching for God to feel like they have found a connection.

But then I think back. I will never forget, as a young boy, standing outside in the freezing cold of a Western New York winter in front of the United Methodist Church down the street from my home. My oldest sister was singing "Silent Night" as part of what I think was a live nativity. I remember being moved by the sounds I heard, but not knowing why.

I think Christmas reminds us that is sometimes alright just to be moved by wonder and not worry about why. Don’t get me wrong, the why is important, and throughout the year, in sermons, in liturgy, in Bible studies, we will and should talk about the why. We should explore the questions of our faith in hopes of deepening our faith and enriching our relationship with God, but today, perhaps we can just rejoice.

Donald Miller in his book Searching for God Knows What takes me one step further. He contends that there is stuff you just can’t understand in your head until those things sink into your very being.[1]

Today’s reading from the Hebrew prayer book, The Book of Psalms so reflects that idea of wondrous praise and rejoicing.

⁹Worship the Lord in holy splendor; tremble before him, all the earth.

Notice it says “all the earth.” Not just, all the people, all the earth.

¹⁰Say among the nations, “The Lord is king! The world is firmly established; it shall never be moved. He will judge the peoples with equity.” ¹¹Let the heavens be glad, and let the earth rejoice; let the sea roar, and all that fills it; ¹²let the field exult, and everything in it. Then shall all the trees of the forest sing for joy ¹³before the Lord

All the trees in the forest sing for joy! What a wonder-filled image. If you look at plants, from the tiniest weed to the grandest oak, they all reach up their leaves in branches in praise, their very existence in triumphant praise to God.

I think back to that cold night listening to the words of “Silent Night.” As United Methodists, we believe in prevenient grace, that idea that long before we go searching for God, God is reaching out to us, seeking to draw us close, just waiting for us to reach back. As I think about that moment and that music, I sense God's wonder in it and consider how that worked in my heart for decades before I reached back and accepted the love that God had always offered me.

It is humbling when preparing for Christmas worship, when thinking about all the details and all the words, to consider that no matter what I do, God will be reaching out, whispering to us all, teaching our hearts the story of Christmas in words we can all understand.

Today, I will just try to stay out of God’s way.

---

[1] Donald Miller, Searching for God Knows What, (Nashville: Nelson Books, 2004) 57

Will Rice - Sermon #12 - C is For ?

Rev. Will Rice
Grace United Methodist Church
Corpus Christi, TX
pastorwillrice@gmail.com

Isaiah 61:1-2

¹The spirit of the Lord GOD is upon me, because the LORD has anointed me; he has sent me to bring good news to the oppressed, to bind up the brokenhearted, to proclaim liberty to the captives, and release to the prisoners; ²to proclaim the year of the LORD's favor, and the day of vengeance of our God; to comfort all who mourn;

Ever since the first Sunday of Advent, just a couple of weeks ago, people have been asking, “when are we going to start talking about Christmas?” And John and I keep responding with something about preparing the way, preparing our hearts, or in general getting ready for Christmas. Today, we are going to talk about Christmas. Well, sort of.

Once again though, I will ask, “What is Christmas?” And that is a question I have asked for some time. I got a lot mixed signals growing up. Mel Torme told me that Christmas is:

Chestnuts roasting on an open fire
Jack Frost nipping at your nose
Yule-tide carols being sung by a choir
And folks dressed up like Eskimos.

Which, of course left out any notion of decking the halls with boughs of holly, something that we never managed to do at my house.

I knew as a young child that Frosty the Snowman was a jolly happy soul, with a corncob pipe and a button nose and two eyes made out of coal. But even now that I am married to my true love, I have yet to receive 12 drummers drumming, eleven pipers piping, ten lords a leaping, nine ladies dancing, eight maids a milking, seven swans a swimming, six geese a laying, five golden rings, four calling birds, three French Hens, two turtle doves, not even one single partridge in a pear tree.

Now, I do know that Christmas has something to do with dashing through the snow, and being from Western New York, I have done that, though never in a one horse open sleigh.

I have dreamed of a white Christmas, and Corpus Christi even got one last year. I even remember as a child during one unusually warm December saying, “It’s not really Christmas if it doesn’t snow!”

I’ve sung:

I'll be home for Christmas
You can count on me
Please have snow and mistletoe
and presents on the tree

And I have spent December 25^th at work, far away from home, with no mistletoe, no tree and no presents.

But still…

It's the most wonderful time of the year.
With the kids jingle belling,
and everyone telling you,
"Be of good cheer,"
It's the most wonderful time of the year.

I love all of these images, because they remind me of a wonderful time of year. They all give me warm and fuzzy feelings. They represent family and love and the magic of this time of the year and I embrace them. But, one of the things I am trying to do in Advent is clarify. I am trying to clarify what things are good in a sentimental way and what things are clearly about Jesus Christ.

There is a big outcry right now (not that it is really a new thing) about the “secularization” of Christmas. Someone the other day wanted me to boycott a large retailer because they were saying “Happy Holidays” instead of “Merry Christmas” I have to tell you, I think them saying “Happy Holidays” is just fine. I will instead decide whether or not to shop there based on how they treat their employees, who they buy their products from and how they help to take care of the environment.

You see, I am not so interested in what retailers are doing, for their business is to make money and more interested in what we, the church, whose business is changing lives, is doing.

Some people are upset at the President for sending out “Holiday” cards instead of Christmas cards. Once again, holiday cards are fine with me, because I am more interested in how public policy reflects our priorities of justice and mercy than I am in a small token of recognition sent out to friends and campaign contributors.

You see, I think if we are going to stand up at yell, “Put the Christ back in Christmas!” we better stop to consider what the heck that means.

So, as we continue on our journey of Advent, as we continue to prepare to celebrate the birth of Jesus Christ, let’s take another look at what we are indeed celebrating. As we do that, let’s read about the very first sermon by the young man in question, Jesus of Nazareth.

Luke 4:16-21

¹⁶When he came to Nazareth, where he had been brought up, he went to the synagogue on the sabbath day, as was his custom. He stood up to read, ¹⁷and the scroll of the prophet Isaiah was given to him. He unrolled the scroll and found the place where it was written: ¹⁸"The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he has anointed me to bring good news to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim release to the captives and recovery of sight to the blind, to let the oppressed go free, ¹⁹to proclaim the year of the Lord's favor." ²⁰And he rolled up the scroll, gave it back to the attendant, and sat down. The eyes of all in the synagogue were fixed on him. ²¹Then he began to say to them, "Today this scripture has been fulfilled in your hearing."

“C is For?”

Jesus was, of course reading from the prophet Isaiah, which we heard read during our Old Testament reading. As I read from that same passage this week, I realized that perhaps it might yield some clues about what it would actually mean to put Christ back in Christmas.

I don’t want to get all academic here, but let me explain something. The Luke text, I just read, was originally written in Greek but it recounts Jesus reading something that was written in Hebrew. So, I am going to be switching back and forth between Luke and Isaiah, don’t worry. It reads in Isaiah:

¹The spirit of the Lord GOD is upon me, because the LORD has anointed me;

At the end of the today’s Luke text, Jesus says:

"Today this scripture has been fulfilled in your hearing."

He is claiming this prophecy. This is about him. He is the anointed one of God, the Christ, and this text tells us what that means.

I think, if we read this carefully, we can see what Jesus is all about, and as we continue to work our way through Advent, we can see what Christmas is all about and more importantly what we should do about it.

¹The spirit of the Lord GOD is upon me, because the LORD has anointed me; he has sent me to bring good news to the oppressed

The first word here is a word of comfort. In Luke’s Greek, there is actually a word euvaggeli,zw (euongaeleitzo) that means “to proclaim good news.” The first thing that Jesus feels called to do, the first thing that we can do to follow is to simply proclaim the good news, bring comfort to the world through sharing the gospel. We can tell the world “there is something else, there is a better way.” We might not totally get it, we don’t have all the answers but we believe that contained in the scriptures, in our tradition, in our attempt to be faithful, is a better life, here on earth and a promise of something more. A word of comfort.

But as Christians we quickly learn that comfort is not always enough. We learn that we have to do more than just talk. Because it doesn’t just say “bring good news,” it says

bring good news to the oppressed

And very often good news to the oppressed has to be more than “come to church” or “Jesus loves you.” The second word here is care. Care is a great word because it is a noun and a verb and even an active and passive verb. I can care deeply for you in my heart, but I can also reach out with my hands and care for you. That’s the kind of care I am talking about and the kind of care I think Isaiah is talking about. If I am oppressed for whatever reason, words of comfort are helpful, but I need more. If I am oppressed by hunger, yes I need to know that Jesus loves me, but I also need something to eat.

This is where I start to see the disconnect with the outcry over the direction Christmas is taking. If the world’s largest retailer says “Merry Christmas” to everyone who walks in, there might be, in there, a word of comfort, but does that translate into care?

he has sent me to bring good news to the oppressed, to bind up the brokenhearted,

“Bind up the brokenhearted…” Bind up here is literally to bind up like you would a wound.

he has sent me to bring good news to the oppressed, to bind up the brokenhearted,

The third word I see here is the word compassion. That’s a word we bandy about quite a bit, but what does it mean?

com·pas·sion n. Deep awareness of the suffering of another coupled with the wish to relieve it.[1]

That is another word I love, an active noun. It is not just a deep awareness, it is coupled with a desire to do something about it. If I leave it like that, it sounds just like care. But it is more. If we split this word apart and look at it, we have com which is a Latin root meaning with or together with and then passion. Now that is not passion in the intense emotion sense, but in the sense we use it around Easter, as in the passion of Christ, as in suffering. So put this word together and we get suffering with. That is to see one’s pain or burden and suffer with them.

This text isn’t the only clue that Jesus is all about compassion. When you read the gospels you see that Jesus was very concerned and deeply moved with the suffering of others, whether they were poor, sick, trapped by their own bad decisions. I get the impression from the gospels that Jesus would have made a terrible pastor. His disciples were always trying to get him here or there and he was always stopping to help someone. If Jesus was a pastor, he would be so distracted by the needs of others that he would never get his sermon written, never get the bulletin together. He would always be late for the staff meeting and he would probably never return his email, because Jesus had a deep awareness of the suffering of others, coupled with the wish to relieve it. Jesus suffered with those who suffered.

There is actually a word for this in Greek splagcni,zomai (splagknizomy) which means to be moved with compassion that is only used about Jesus, except when Jesus uses it to describe in a parable how we should act – with compassion.

If we are following Jesus we are suffering with those in the world who suffer. We are aware that they suffer and we are moved to relieve their suffering. Comfort and care are assumed in this and it is more. You see I can give comfort and I can give care, without really being all that in touch with one’s suffering. I sometimes help just because it’s the right thing to do or because I feel I should. But when I am truly moved with compassion, I don’t have much choice in the matter. I feel moved to help those I suffer with.

When I get here, I think back to the idea of being upset that the place I shop says “Happy Holidays” instead of “Merry Christmas” and I think, “so what?” This year alone, there have been a number of devastating hurricanes and floods, a massive earthquake, a record number of people falling below the poverty line, civil wars in countries too poor to feed their people in the first place. And right in our midst, people imprisoned by drug addiction, homelessness, violence, and disease.

he has sent me to bring good news to the oppressed, to bind up the brokenhearted

Compassion.

And you know what? Jesus will take us further than even compassion.

to proclaim liberty to the captives, and release to the prisoners; ²to proclaim the year of the LORD's favor.

Jesus takes us one step further with a word about change. This is what eventually got Jesus into a whole bunch of trouble. No one gets all that upset when you want to bring words of comfort or care or even compassion, but when you start talking about change, people, even good people get upset.

When Jesus is talking about releasing prisoners here, he is not likely talking about murderers, and kidnappers, though Jesus compassion really knows no limit, he is probably talking about political prisoners but even more than that, he could be talking about people imprisoned by anything that keeps them from having a real shot at life. We have that now. We have people imprisoned by generational poverty, lack of education, drug addiction, lifetimes of bad decisions.

Jesus proclaims liberty and release and even more the year of the LORD’s favor. I don’t have time to go into the full ramifications of saying such a thing, but Jesus is talking about change. Jesus is talking about a change in the very systems of society that make put people in these prisons in the first place.

Now this is something that people don’t like to talk much about at Christmas, but this is the kind of savior whose birth we are getting ready to celebrate. This little baby born in a manger did and will call for radical change.

As we are moved with compassion, Jesus calls us to suffer with those who suffer and then begin to figure out why they suffer in the first place and then do something about it.

If you are being particularly attentive, you may fear that this is about to turn political, that I am about to tell you what the government should do to bring about change. I am not. I am going to do something much more difficult. I am going to suggest that we are responsible.

Let me give you an example. I am going to use something that is really on the hearts of some members of this congregation and that has come to my attention. When someone walks through our doors who is imprisoned by poverty, living with little hope of ever getting beyond a place in life that is defined by wondering every day how they will feed themselves and their family, we can follow this pattern.

We can comfort them, invite them in here and tell them the good news.
We can care for them, help to provide for some of the basic needs that they go without.
We can have compassion, taking the time to really understand what it is like to be them.
We can work for change, truly learning about the systemic condition that lead to a life of poverty. We can take time to put aside our assumption, our preconceived notions, our prejudices. And then with a deeper understanding we can look for our role in helping to bring about an individual or on a societal solution. Change.

Man, Christmas is a lot of work. But hear the good news, we are not in this alone. Coming, to this manger, a savior. The son of God born to save us from our own sin and to lead us in truly changing the world, to bring a glimpse of heaven to earth. It is a most wonderful time of year.

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[1] Source: The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition Copyright © 2000 by Houghton Mifflin Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Company. All rights reserved.