Sermon: Immanuel is God-with-us

A Sermon preached in 

Christ Church, Grosse Pointe, Michigan
by The Reverend Vicki Hesse, Associate

The 4th Sunday of Advent, Year A
18 December 2016

Listen here.

Restore us, O Lord God of Hosts *

show us the light of your countenance and we shall be saved. Amen

A few summers ago, my partner and I went to Santa Fe, New Mexico. Being church geeks, we went to visit the Loretto Chapel,[1] at the end of the Santa Fe Trail.  We toured the beautiful little church, which was patterned after Sainte-Chapelle in Paris. It claims to be the first Gothic structure west of the Mississippi. We learned that in completing the Chapel, the architect did not offer any access to the choir loft, some 22 feet above the sanctuary.  For the sisters running the convent, all the options were undesirable: a conventional staircase would interfere with the already small space, a re-built balcony would be too expensive, and a ladder would be too dangerous for the nuns to climb up and down.  So the Sisters of the Chapel did what you and I would do: they prayed. 

This dilemma reminded me of Joseph’s situation: difficult to get out of – bad options all around.  It seems that Joseph’s options were undesirable: to divorce her publicly would disgrace her or to divorce her quietly and disgrace himself. 

Either way, he would have to divorce her.  No possible way to redeem the situation. Only pain.

It did not cross his mind that Mary’s unbelievable story might be God’s truth.

He could not imagine that. Only the truth, embraced, would transform the situation.

What do we do when our situation seems difficult to get out of? When it seems there are only undesirable options? We over function:  We torture ourselves. Overeat. Complain. Take it out on people we love.  Or we under function: Isolate. Sleep. Have someone else decide so that we can blame it on them. We know this feeling when there are only bad options all around.

Don’t you just feel for Joseph?  His human mind was only capable of knowing

negative options.  Biblical Scholar Alyce McKenzie suggests Joseph’s self-talk:

 I cannot believe that she has done this to me…For one fleeting moment, I even considered the possibility that she was telling the truth, but it is more than I can swallow…I believe I will divorce her and save her the public humiliation of accusing her of adultery… I confess I feel somewhat betrayed by God as well as by Mary…now  the sun is setting, and I am filled with pain. I will go to bed with my pain, and hope for sleep. Tomorrow I will send a message to Mary

letting her know of my decision.[2]

Well, we all know how *that* dismissal went.  We see Joseph in every crèche scene.  Joseph is portrayed in many artist’s work, at Mary’s side on the night of the birth, hair tousled, face lined with concern, protective stance over mother and babe.  Something dramatic *must* have happened in that sleeping conversation with the Angel.  The story reveals what happened: it was “…a night of birthing just as real as Christmas eve: this was the birth of a father for the Son of God.”[3]

In his sleep, with his mind out of the way, Joseph opened his soul to God. And in that opening, in the whispering of the Truth, God offered a resolution to Joseph’s dilemma: one that human reason could not detect.

On that night, prefiguring Christmas Eve, the angel invited Joseph to imagine a different future: one of an intimate birth in a manger, a rambunctious boy with many gifts, a young man with a prophetic purpose, and himself as a proud parent.  The possibilities made him giddy with excitement.

The angel revealed to Joseph a key to his dilemma: belief. Belief in an impossible story.  Belief in himself as the father of God’s child, belief in himself as one who can nurture the boy and honor him with a name: Immanuel – God-with-us.

The angel explained that to save the people from their sins, “you know that the boy will need examples.  He’ll need you to teach him to take risks like the one you are taking now, to teach him how to withstand severe disapproval like the kind you will experience, and to believe in the unbelievable good news when it seems all hope seems lost & only pain remains – like they way you feel now.

You know that the boy will need you to walk to Bethlehem so that he can walk to Calvary.”

In that moment, the angel mid-wifed the birth of a father for the Son of God.

Waking from his sleep, perhaps he thought, “not my will but your will be done.”

Jesus is not the only one who needs examples like Joseph. We all struggle with dilemmas and situations that seemly only have bad outcomes.  We need people to assure us when we take risks. We need people beside us when we get disapproval. We long for assurance from someone who knows from experience that God’s unbelievable good news is true! 

Maybe you are that light-bearer being birthed this advent. Maybe you are the one who is to offer assurance in God’s unbelievable good news of God’s love and reconciliation for all humanity is possible, despite what appears to be an irredeemably broken world.

This is why Joseph whispers to you today: to know that God will work in us

as God worked in him. God is with us – Immanuel.

Which brings me back to Loretto Chapel.  How did the sisters resolve the choir loft access? Well, one night while the sisters were praying, a man appeared at the door of the convent with a donkey and a toolbox, asking for work. When the nuns told the man about the predicament, he offered to build a spiral staircase.   That staircase was, and is to this day, an engineering feat: thirty-three steps and two complete 360-degree turns, made of only wooden pegs and no nails.  Once the miraculous staircase was completed, the carpenter disappeared. Many believed it to be St. Joseph himself, having come in answer to the sisters' prayers. 

Maybe it’s just a legend, but I like to think that St. Joseph is out there this Advent, with his donkey and toolbox at hand, hoping to re-craft imaginative resolutions to hopeless dilemmas. And, whispering God’s love to you with unceasing hope, imaginative dreams and unbelievable possibilities.

This advent, may our hopes and fears of all the years be met by the hope of the birth of an infant savior, Immanuel.

Amen.

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[1] Cited at  http://www.lorettochapel.com/history.html on December 14, 2016.

[2] Cited at http://www.patheos.com/Resources/Additional-Resources/Fear-of-Betrayal on December 13, 2016

[3] Ibid., McKenzie

Sermon: Help

A Sermon preached in 

Christ Church, Grosse Pointe, Michigan
by The Reverend Vicki Hesse, Associate

The 23^rd Sunday after Pentecost (Proper 25, Year C)
23 October 2015

May the words of my mouth and the meditations 

of all our hearts be always acceptable to you O Lord,

our strength and our redeemer.

Listen on SoundCloud here

A few years ago, Anne Lamott wrote this book on prayer,  “Help. Thanks. Wow.”  The little book is filled with Anne Lamott-esque descriptions of her own prayer life that makes you laugh out loud and weep in too-close-for-comfort familiarity. Take this one passage, on the chapter for Help, as her cat is dying from lymphoma:

When I pray, I pray for alot of things.  I ask for health and happiness for my friends, and for their children…I pray for our leaders to act in the common good, or at least the common slightly better.  I pray that aid and comfort be rushed to people after catastrophes…  It is also okay to ask that my cat have an easy death.  Some of my friends’ kids are broken and the kids’ parents are living in that, and other friends’ marriages are broken and every family I love has serious problems involving someone’s health or finances. But we can be big in prayer, and trust that God won’t mind if we pray about the cat and [my grandson’s] tender heart.  Is God going to say, “Sorry we don’t have enough for the cat”? I don’t think so.

I know even as I pray for help that there will be tremendous compassion, mercy, generosity, companionship, and laughter from other people in the world and from friends, doctors, nurses, hospice people.  I also know that life can be devastating and it’s still okay to be [mad at] at God: Mercy, schmercy.  

I can picture God saying, “Okay, hon. I’ll be here when you’re done with your list.” Then He goes back to knitting new forests or helping less pissy people until I hit rock bottom.  And when I finally do, there may be hope.

There is freedom in hitting bottom, in seeing that you won’t be able to save or rescue your daughter, her spouse, his parents, or your career, relief in admitting you’ve reached the place of great unknowing. This is where restoration can begin, because when you’re still in the state of trying to fix the unfixable, everything bad is engaged: the chatter of your mind, the tension of your physiology, all the trunks and wheel-ons you carry from the past.  It’s exhausting, crazy-making. 

Help.  Help us walk through this. Help us come through.  It is the first great prayer.[1]

Prayer.  The topic of the gospel text today, extending from last week’s prayer parable of the persistent widow.  One theologian characterized these complementary parables as, “the promise of persistent prayer” and the “peril of presumptuous prayer.” [2]

Jesus told the parable to “some who (1) trusted in themselves and [who] (2) regarded others with contempt.” Although it seems that Jesus speaks to the Pharisees directly, the gospel writer cleverly “vague-ified” the audience.  Why is this important? Because probably, Jesus knew then (as we know now) that disciples and believers were just as vulnerable to pride and self-righteousness as the Pharisees.  This way, people who didn’t recognize their own tendency to play the role of a Pharisee might have assumed that Jesus was talking about someone else, but at the end, the hearers on that day had to confront their inner Pharisee – the one in their own hearts. 

Jesus offered this not-so-subtle parable to crack open hearts and to teach about the oh-so-subtle paradoxical nature of Grace. Jesus left open the way for hearers to learn how grace is always available, yet can only be received by those who have learned open-handed empathy.  Just as the nature of mercy and forgiveness can only be received by those who are merciful and forgiving.  Grace, mercy, forgiveness are always available, particularly when, as Anne Lamott says, when we hit bottom and become willing to receive these gifts.

This parable itself is not subtle. But if we see the Pharisee and the Tax Collector only as the clip art characters we know from previous sermons, we miss what makes each unique and we minimize the power of the reversal.

See, in those days, Pharisees tended to hold a liberal understanding of Scripture.  The aim of their Law was to make it possible for everyone to observe Torah.  Kind of like the religious orders of today, like of monks, or nuns, who demonstrate how to be pious. Pharisees might have been like our beloved SSJE monks, who offer daily inspiring quotes for better living into Jesus’ commands to love God and to love one another as he loved us.

Tax Collectors, on the other hand, were not just commonly despised IRS agents who collected what was due. Tax Collectors collaborated with the Roman imperial government and took advantage of their role, extracting more than was due and pocketing the difference.  Tax collectors were not known for being humble in any way – they were seen to be cheaters: dishonest manipulators. 

Now the reversal of the parable can begin to unfold in the position and prayer of each.

The Pharisee’s position is that of “standing by himself,” separated from others, to maintain his purity.   The Pharisee’s prayer, also, is “standing by himself,” totally concerning himself.  While he does thank God, the substance of the prayer is found in the repetition of “I”… I thank you that I am not like others. I fast … I tithe …  His prayer asks nothing of God; why would he? it is all about him. So it would have surprised the original hearers to imagine the beloved and respected Pharisee to pride himself with his ample piety, expressing no humility or contrition.

The Tax Collector’s position is that of “standing far off,” holding a relative safe distance from others. The Tax Collector’s prayer, also, is far different.  He does not look up to heaven, the common prayer posture of the day, but he looks down. He beat his breast, the common prayer gesture of contrition. He boasts of nothing.  He asks for help, so this would have stunned the hearers to imagine the hated Tax Collector asking for help.

Jesus unveils the powerful reversal in the final lines, describing how the one called “holy” by society walked away from the temple, “wrapped up in his grandiose self righteousness” – while the one reviled by the good church folks went home, justified in the sight of God.[3] Is it too obvious to state that the Tax Collector hit bottom and the Pharisee hit a personal high?  I think it is. 

My sisters and brothers, being a disciple is a balancing act.  While we open our hearts to love, by caring for the poor, serving at Crossroads, having civil conversations with those whom we disagree, visiting someone in hospital, teaching children to read, engaging in citizenship by supporting fair and just legislation … while we open our hearts and our hands to serve God’s beloved community, we can let go of the outcome and trust in God’s grace to get it done.

Achievements have a place – but not in the center of our relationship with the “God of the cross and the Friend of the poor.”  As we open our hearts to love, we can pray for God to Help. That is the first great prayer.

Today’s parable is not subtle, and it’s not simple.  It’s about God’s grace – the paradoxical way that it is always available, always abundant, always accessible.  And it is offered through empathy for others – and for ourselves. 

May we, this day, open our hands and hearts to receive the freedom of grace and love that is extravagantly offered through the One who died for us and rose to set us free.  May we, this day, set our hope on God, for it is God who does all this!

Amen.

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[1] Anne Lamott, Help Thanks Wow: The Three Essential Prayers,  (New York, Riverhead Books, 2012) p. 13-15

[2] Peter Rhea Jones, The Teaching of the Parables (Nashville; Broadman, 1982) p. 198 as referenced in New Interpreter’s Bible Commentary: Luke 18:9-14, p. 340. note 194

[3] Laura Sugg, Feasting On The Word: Pastoral Perspective, p. 214