I preached last Sunday (Feb 5, 2023), the Fifth Sunday After the Epiphany, using the texts from Rev. Dr. Wilda Gafney’s Women’s Lectionary: 2 Kings 5:1-4, 9-14; Psalm 30; Acts 16:16-24; and Matthew 9:18-26. The sermon text is below, and you can find the 17-minute sermon audio here.
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Consenting to Christmas Joy (a Sermon)
I had the honor of preaching this past Christmas Eve. I thought I’d share my homily here, a succinct 6-minute sermon (with a long quote from K.J. Ramsey) called “Consenting to Christmas Joy” (Click the link for the audio, read on for the written version.)
Isaiah 26:16-19 | Psalm 68:4-13 | 1 Thessalonians 4:13-18 | Luke 2:1-20
For Christmas, the Women’s Lectionary has given us the traditional nativity narrative from Luke’s Gospel, along with promises of the dead rising: the story of the birth of the Messiah overlapping with the prophesied second coming of the Messiah.
The prophet Isaiah recounts the fruitless labor pains of our efforts to make things right for ourselves and for the world. We sense the gap between our longings and our actual lives. We writhe in labor because of our distress, but we birthed only wind, unable to produce the life, flourishing, and justice we long for.
But then comes the sudden prophecy: “Your dead shall live; their corpses shall rise… the earth shall release those long dead!” God will bring about the flourishing we long for, by releasing us from the ultimate enemy: raising us from the dead.
This prophecy begins its fulfillment in the labor pains of Mary, an impoverished Jewish girl from a backwater town on the margins of the Roman Empire who will give birth to the Word-made-flesh, the one who will conquer death and become the first fruits of the resurrection from the dead.
And so Mary’s labor pains prefigure, as it were, the birth pangs of the earth itself: because God has become human in the flesh of Jesus, joining humanity and divinity forever, it’s as if the earth is pregnant, and just as a pregnant woman cannot hold the baby within her womb forever, so will the earth be unable to hold the dead forever. Awake and sing for joy you who dwell in the dust!
And as Paul writes to the Thessalonians, this means we will be reunited with those who have been separated from us by death, and we will dwell with them in the presence of Jesus forever.
So today our Advent longing gives way to Christmas joy, because in the incarnation of Jesus, God has taken on all that it means to be human: all our suffering and pain and weakness and frailty, so that we may participate in the very life and love of God.
We do not pretend that all our longings are fulfilled or that our suffering doesn’t exist, but today in the midst of our ongoing doubts and pain and unfulfilled longings, we consent to Christmas joy. In the words of author K.J. Ramsey, “We welcome the wildest story…
The story of Love became more than words when a woman consented to bear a Life that couldn’t be understood, controlled, or protected from coming harm.
The Word became flesh through the womb of a woman.
And her welcome still matters today.
Mary, who was poor and quite young, who grew up in an occupied city where violence against unmarried women was rampant. Mary, who knew the stigma her courageous consent would bring.
Mary’s welcome still meets us where we are marginalized.
Mary’s consent still calls out to us where we need courage.
Female bodies, disabled bodies, queer bodies, mentally ill bodies, and Brown and Black bodies continue to be the battleground where much of the church most reduces the story of Love into mere words. And Mary the Mother of God reminds us, if Love came through a bloodied birth canal to a woman whom society shamed, Love can still be born wherever society makes us stuck and treats us with scorn.
If we forget the context of Christmas, we will forget our context has already been christened.
- Your positionality doesn’t preclude you from participating in the story of Love.
- Your struggles can’t stop you from being one in whom Love is born.
- Your wounds can never wall you off from welcoming Divinity into this world.
When the angel told Mary she would bear the Messiah, she said, “Let it be with me just as you have said.” May you say yes to welcoming the dignity of what your body bears.
The Incarnation means that being human is now part of what it means to be God, and that overcoming death is now part of what it means to human. So let us consent to the joy of Christmas today, exulting for a few moments in the wonder of the Incarnation.
Let us now, like the shepherds, glorify and praise God for what we have heard and seen.
Let us now, like Mary the Mother of God, preserve the words of the good news and contemplate them in our hearts.
Let us sing together for joy for all that God has done.
The “O” Antiphons of Advent
An Advent tradition I’ve been participating in for a couple years now is praying the so-called “‘O’ Antiphons of Advent” during Evening Prayer on the seven days leading up to Christmas Eve. The church has been singing these since at least the eighth century.
An “antiphon” is a short liturgical text chanted or sung responsively preceding and/or following a psalm or canticle (song from Scripture). The “O” Antiphons of Advent accompany the Magnificat canticle of Evening Prayer from December 17-23. To use them as a standalone devotion, simply pray the antiphon, then pray the Magnificat (Luke 1:46-55), then finish by praying the antiphon again.
I love the rich biblical imagery they use to evoke the messianic hopes of the Old Testament to proclaim the coming Christ as the fulfillment of God’s promises, both past and present.
Here are the “O” Antiphons of Advent (translations taken from the Church of England):
December 17 – O Sapientia
O Wisdom, coming forth from the mouth of the Most High,
reaching from one end to the other mightily,
and sweetly ordering all things:
Come and teach us the way of prudence.
cf Ecclesiasticus 24:3; Wisdom 8:1
December 18 – O Adonai
O Adonai, and leader of the House of Israel,
who appeared to Moses in the fire of the burning bush
and gave him the law on Sinai:
Come and redeem us with an outstretched arm.
cf Exodus 3:2; 24:12
December 19 – O Radix Jesse
O Root of Jesse, standing as a sign among the peoples;
before you kings will shut their mouths,
to you the nations will make their prayer:
Come and deliver us, and delay no longer.
cf Isaiah 11:10; 45:14; 52:15; Romans 15:12
December 20 – O Clavis David
O Key of David and scepter of the House of Israel;
you open and no one can shut;
you shut and no one can open:
Come and lead the prisoners from the prison house,
those who dwell in darkness and the shadow of death.
cf Isaiah 22:22; 42:7
December 21 – O Oriens
O Morning Star,
splendor of light eternal and sun of righteousness:
Come and enlighten those who dwell in darkness
and the shadow of death.
cf Malachi 4:2
December 22 – O Rex Gentium
O King of the nations, and their desire,
the cornerstone making both one:
Come and save the human race,
which you fashioned from clay.
cf Isaiah 28:16; Ephesians 2:14
December 23 – O Emmanuel
O Emmanuel, our King and our lawgiver,
the hope of the nations and their Savior:
Come and save us, O Lord our God.
cf Isaiah 7:14
Whoever Isn’t Against You is For You
John said, “Master, we saw someone throwing demons out in your name, and we tried to stop him because he isn’t in our group of followers.”
But Jesus replied, “Don’t stop him, because whoever isn’t against you is for you.”
John 9:49-50
Just before this little exchange, the disciples were arguing about who was the greatest within the group, and when Jesus rebuffs them by placing a child in their midst and telling them that whoever is least among them is the greatest, they turn their attention to outside the group and, in effect, say, “Well we’re definitely greater than those guys, right?”
Just like us, Jesus’s disciples are relentlessly measuring their status and honor to see who they’re better than, and who is better than them. Just like them, we have all kinds of ways of measuring:
- Whose theology is better?
- Whose liturgy is better?
- Whose aesthetics are better?
- Whose church is bigger?
- Whose preaching is better?
- Whose discipleship practices are better?
Instead of these status games, Jesus brings us back to the point: is God’s kingdom going forward? Well then don’t get in the way (and maybe even rejoice a little!).
These people you’re upset about, are they opposing God’s work? If not, then stop worrying about them. Do you think they’re going about the work in the wrong way? Do you think they’re not part of the right team? Don’t have the correct affiliation or the right theology? Wrong question!
Better questions: Is God’s kingdom advancing? Are the marginalized brought into communion? Are the broken healed? Are the prisoners set free? Are those in bondage being delivered? Is good news being preached to the poor? Then don’t worry about them being part of the wrong group or having bad theology.
As long as they’re not against you, they’re for you! If they’re not opposing God’s kingdom advancing, they’re your partners, and there’s absolutely no need to figure out who’s better than who.
A Sermon on Mary and Martha
This is an adaptation of a sermon I preached this past summer on Luke 10:38-42 (Mary and Martha), when it came up in the Sunday lectionary. I thought I would post it in written form here since it also came up in the Daily Office lectionary today.
Receiving the Disruptive Word
Now as they went on their way, Jesus entered a certain village where a woman named Martha welcomed him. She had a sister named Mary, who sat at Jesus’s feet and listened to what he was saying. But Martha was distracted by her many tasks, so she came to him and asked, “Lord, do you not care that my sister has left me to do all the work by myself? Tell her, then, to help me.” But the Lord answered her, “Martha, Martha, you are worried and distracted by many things, but few things are needed—indeed only one. Mary has chosen the better part, which will not be taken away from her.”
Luke 10:38-42
Often this brief story is preached as a contrast between prayer and housework, between the contemplative life and the activist life, between the equally good practices of listening and service. Some of us are Marys and some of of us are Marthas, the sermons go, but God’s church needs both.
But it would seem that what’s going on in this passage is much more disruptive than that. Jesus is upending all of Martha’s assumptions about what God wants, and how to truly welcome God’s kingdom. Jesus is surprising and offending common sensibilities and preconceived notions about how to be faithful, about what is proper and what is inappropriate.
The good news we proclaim today is that Jesus the Incarnate Word of God is present among us right and here and now, proclaiming a fresh word from God. This word is reshaping the world in the goodness of God, but as it does, it disrupts our anxious clinging to preconceived notions about God wants and how to be faithful. There is space for us today to sit at the feet of Jesus and receive this disruptive, renewing word, and allow it to reshape our lives. This is the one thing needed. Will you choose the better part today?
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