Agape Update

1 Corinthians 13:1-13; Jeremiah 1:4-10; Luke 4:21-30

In Saturday’s Beatle Bailey comic strip, Sgt. Snorkle tells Private Zero to get his cell phone since the hike was going to be a long out of the way one. Zero says that he has lost his phone and asks why someone does invent a phone that is wired to the wall so it doesn’t get lost.

With every upgrade in technology we gain something and we lose something. People post pictures on Facebook of items no longer in use and ask if people remember them. At my age I do know more than ninety percent of them, and have used many of them.

More of us have computers today than we did ten or fifteen years ago. Thirty years ago I bought my first desktop unit which had minimal memory. I replaced it seven years later with one that had a small hard drive. Nine years later I got a laptop which was replaced in six years by the one which I replaced last autumn. I am on my third smart phone in the last decade. The one I have now has more computing capability than the college main frame computer of 50 years ago. It fits into my pocket rather than an outsized living room and is exceedingly more reliable.

Every time I turn my computer on it looks for updates. Then I get a little pop-up window that tells me that I need to install them. Sometimes I feel as though I spend more time keeping programs up to date than I do using them.

A meme is an idea or image that goes viral on social media. One recent meme has a child asking the parent what a book is. The parent answers that books were software updates for the mind.

For computers, tablets, and smart phones there are thousands of apps – software programs – that will connect you to certain stores, keep track of your heart rate, tell you your bank balance, track your calories, tell you when to send a birthday card or buy more ink for your printer. That’s not all that different from a library with hundreds of thousands of books to update our minds in every imaginable subject area.

The computer apps are written to work on an handful of operating systems: PC, Mac, Unix, and a few very specialized ones. Books also are based on certain operating systems which are language based or genre based. You can’t use a Dickens novel to build a bridge and a textbook on quantum mechanics won’t be much use in telling you how to change the pads on your car’s brakes.

Each upgrade in the operating system brings a certain measure of expectation and anxiety. I have spent a lot of time this past week upgrading a nearly new computer in the church office to Windows 10. We bought the computer to replace a perfectly good one which ran on Windows XP, which Microsoft no longer supports, and for which software programs are no longer being back-engineered. Without the upgrade we could not produce necessary reports.

If Paul were literate in our computing technology, he would say that the belief or faith operating system of the Corinthian church desperately needed the agape update that he describes in chapter 13. Agape love is the update we need, and, if we don't get it, have it, or use it, nothing else matters. Nothing else works.

While apps have made us better connected electronically, we aren’t necessarily better and more compassionate people. While we are posting a comment to a distant friend’s Facebook page offering sympathy for their illness, we may be ignoring the distressed person sitting at the next table in the coffee shop. We can Instagram a picture of our delicious vegetable lasagna dinner while walking past a hungry homeless person on the street. While making a smart remark in response to a friend’s post on the current political scene, we forget about the hard times our immigrant grandparents or parents experienced. Are we nothing more than clanging gongs? Don’t we need the update?

Paul was dealing with an app problem in Corinth (“app” as in the “application of the Gospel”). Even though they were first century Greco-Roman people eking out their living without cell phones, the Corinthians were acting like a bunch of selfie-taking narcissists instead of the church of Jesus Christ.

The list of problems in Corinth sounds a lot like the ones we face in the 21st-century WiFi connected world.

• They were as divided as two sets of social media trolls lobbing insults back and forth at one another (1:10-17). 
• They were obsessed with celebrity teachers, always posting sound bites from their favorites (3:1-9). 
• They seemed to have a relaxed view of sexual ethics, rather than clearing sordid affairs from their history (5:1-2). 
• They might have used a legal app to draft lawsuits against one another (6:1-11). 
• They may have Snapchatted pictures of food sacrificed to idols to those who were trying to eat kosher (8:1-13). 
• The wealthier members of the community might have Instagrammed pictures of the Lord’s Supper feast before their poorer neighbors got there and missed out on all the food (11:17-34). 

The Corinthians tweeted and posted, pinned and chatted, all the while missing out on the richness of real Christian community.

So, Paul texts them that they need an update — one that will not only make their community run more smoothly and in a more Christlike manner, but will also beef up their spiritual security and make the church more user-friendly to outsiders.

It’s “the love update.” Or, better: “The agape update.”

We love to use the word “love.” Unfortunately our use of it covers a multitude of meanings all the way from loving an app, a dress, guacamole, and so forth, to loving a child, parent, or spouse.

The “love” word Paul uses in 1 Corinthians 13 is agape, which is the kind of love that is less about typing your feelings in cute emojis (those little smiley faces) than it is about upgrading to real, willful, sacrificial, unconditional, self-giving love.

Paul lays out the details of that particular update, and how it turns the attention from taking selfies to taking action on behalf of others.

In a community that embraces agape, the agape update changes everything. Instead of being at each other's throats, love makes them patient with one another and takes away the specter of jealousy (v. 4). Love raises peoples’ heads up from the minutiae of their own lives and gives way to the needs of others (v. 5-6). The agape update turns us away from the evil influences that can creep into our lives. It turns us toward the truth of the gospel (v. 6).

This update enables the community of faith to bear, hope and endure all things for each other and for Christ (v. 7). Once this update is installed, it will never fail (v. 8).

Even faith and hope pale in comparison to the power of the agape app. Those apps will always be incomplete without the full update of love (vv. 8-10). The self-obsessed way of the world makes people act like a bunch of spoiled kids. The presence of agape leads the community to maturity, clarity and fulfillment for all (vv. 11-12). Faith and hope are great apps to have on hand at all times, but neither of them is as vital to the entire church operating system as love (v. 13).

How do we get this app? “Use your ambition to get the greater gifts,” is what Paul says just prior to the agape update. After it he urges the Corinthians to “pursue love.” The reality of agape is that it is really more an act of the will than a feeling. Agape love has to be chosen daily, prayed over, studied, practiced and constantly used in order to be effective. It’s a community app that makes the whole community better reflect the presence of Christ.

George Plasterer, pastor of Cross-Wind United Methodist Church in Logansport, Indiana, makes this point: “Most of the apps update automatically. Obviously, such is not the case with love. We have to be quite intentional about it.” The agape app is made available to us by the Holy Spirit. But it’s totally on us to activate it and use it. And, it takes some practice, however, and a clear sense that we have the ability to share this love because Christ has shared it with us first through his sacrificial death on our behalf. As another love app designer named John put it, “We love because God first loved us” (1 John 4:19). When we recognize how much we have been loved, it can increase our bandwidth for loving others in the model of Christ.

The Corinthians desperately needed the agape update, given their history of wrangling with one another. Paul’s plea to download the agape app is no less important for us today when individuals, communities, cultures, economies, churches and denominations are in conflict with one another. In a world where many apps are places for trolls to gather, the church needs to be a people whose primary pursuit is love.

Get the agape update. Like it. Share it. Live it. It’s the best app ever!

General Resource: “The Agape Update,” Homiletics, January 31, 2016. Pp. 40-42.

Unless noted otherwise, all scripture references are from The Common English Bible, © 2011 www.commonenglishbible.com. 

Copyright © 2016 First Presbyterian Church of Waverly, Ohio. Reprinted by permission.

Now Concerning Spiritual Gifts

1 Corinthians 12:1-11; Isaiah 62:1-5; John 2:1-11

The Spirit is part of the life of every person who confesses Jesus is Lord. For the apostle Paul it did not matter what a person’s background was, Jew or Gentile. In today’s church world, it doesn’t matter whether you are Presbyterian, Baptist, Pentecostal, Roman Catholic, Wesleyan, Orthodox, or non-denominational. It does not matter whether you have or don’t have a gift that some perceive as being fancier. What matters is your response to Jesus. The earliest and most basic Christian confession is “Jesus is Lord,” and to confess it is evidence of the Holy Spirit at work in your life.

This working of the Spirit in a person suggests  an intimacy that we may not always associate with the church. We tend to be private individuals and to hold our spiritual matters as close to our being as we do our sexuality. None of us in full mental capacity would think about parading around in our Adam and Eve suits. And very few of us would think about overtly displaying our spiritual natures. “That’s between me and God,” we would say.

Yet that intimacy is there. Isaiah says that God flaunts it:

You will be a splendid garland in the Lord’s hand, a royal turban in the palm of God’s hand. You will no longer be called Abandoned, and your land will no longer be called Deserted. Instead, you will be called My Delight Is in Her, and your land, Married. Because the Lord delights in you, your land will be cared for once again. (Isaiah 62:3-4)

Isaiah uses the image of marriage:

With the joy of a bridegroom because of his bride, so your God will rejoice because of you. (Isaiah 62:5)

God does not wish to be aloof from us. God wishes to be in an intimate relationship with each of us. How we respond to God’s suit for us? Do we swoon in God’s arms, so to speak? Or do we play the coquette, teasing God with playful glances but backing off every so often? Are we hard to get, icily rebuffing God at every turn? Or are we totally oblivious to the love that God offers us? Each of us is a beloved child of God. We can’t change that. And it is hard to ignore it, although some people do.

Intimacy with God is an underlying premise in John’s gospel. It cannot be ignored. “The Word became flesh and made his home among us” (John 1:14). John laid out his good news about Jesus in such a way as to say that God’s desire for intimacy with humanity was fulfilled in Jesus and that this new divine-human relation was going to redirect and reinterpret the tradition. Jeremiah had said as much:

“I will put my Instructions within them and engrave them on their hearts. I will be their God, and they will be my people.” (Jeremiah 31:33)

The new intimate relationship with God will no longer require jars of water for purification. People will be purified once for all, and rather than standing aloof from God people will rejoice and share the wine of gladness of God’s love.

The early church understood this new closeness between divinity and humanity. But Paul found it necessary to counsel the Corinthian believers about how they were responding to God’s love. Paul observed that not everyone was loving God in appropriate ways. As in some human relationships, there were givers and there were takers. Some of the Corinthian believers were taking from God. They were claiming a kind of elitism, a spiritual privilege that was not part of the love that God was giving.

These believers claimed a special relationship with God through the Spirit. They had spiritual gifts which they claimed were better than other spiritual gifts. They were spiritually lording it over sisters and brothers whom they treated as inferior, less privileged, second class.

Paul weighed in strongly on this. This spiritual inequality was another symptom of the nagging dysfunction of the Corinthian church. Yet in his love for them, he didn’t discredit the authenticity of the gifts claimed by the ones demonstrating the spiritual elitism. Rather he responded to the disruption which the self-promotion was causing in the community.

First of all, said Paul, the source of spiritual gifts is the Holy Spirit. Spirituality is not a latent gift in a person which needs to have the on switch pressed. Our piety is not a natural endowment. John Calvin cited this passage in his polemic against all efforts to regard self-cultivated human capacities as the ground of growth in the Christian life. We can take no credit for our spiritual gifts. They cannot be used as rationale for high status in the church.

All Christians receive gifts, not just an elite few. The Christian life is not the personal property of an exclusive class of spiritual super-heroes. Paul’s extensive list of gifts – here and elsewhere – implies that all of them, not just the sensational ones that attract the most notoriety, are valuable. The specific nature of a gift has no grounds for a claim to superiority. Because all such gifts are rooted in the same Spirit and serve a common purpose, attempts to calculate the relative value of gifts goes against the will of God.

Another significant aspect of spiritual gifts is that they are intended to build up community rather than individuals. Genuine spirituality is not the cultivation of private emotional highs, mystical thrills, or an exclusively individual inner peace. Christianity is not a religion of spiritual loners. The spiritual gifts are bestowed in order to build up the church. They are intended to be publicly shared and publicly enjoyed.

Paul also suggests that the plural nature of these gifts is no coincidence. The church can never be monolithic or homogenous. The diversity of talents and experiences in the Christian community is absolutely necessary. The sanctifying work of God is so rich, so multidimensional, that it requires a variety of expressions.

And above all, the Spirit is not disconnected from the person of Christ. It is the Spirit who enables the confession that “Jesus is Lord.” Our Presbyterian theological tradition emphasizes the close connection between Jesus Christ and the Holy Spirit. We maintain that the Holy Spirit works to illumine the Word and to promote the union – intimate relationship – with Christ that results in faith and growth in the Lord. Because the work of Christ and the work of the Spirit cannot be separated, a christological confession such as “Jesus is Lord” serves as a criterion for authentic Christian spirituality.

So, each of you is beloved by God. Each of you is blessed with a spiritual gift. For some it is teaching; for others, hospitality; for others, care-giving; for others, one-on-one conversation; for others, praying; for others, writing notes of encouragement; for others, graphic design; for others, music. Each and every gift is important to this community of Christ. Without any one of these gifts our collective witness to Christ in the world is deficient.

When Christ urged his mountaintop listeners to put their light on a lamp stand rather than under a basket, but to put it on a lamp stand, he inferred that the spiritual gift that each of us possesses is to be used and shared, not held back or hidden.

During the coming week, I urge you to celebrate your loved child of God status by using your spiritual gift every day in some way. And if you aren’t sure about what your gift is, take some time to pray about it and some time to talk with others who know you and your faith. They can help you understand the gift that they see in you.

We cannot ask for gifts in order to feel more powerful, important, or significant. When we make it our goal to be available to God and to seek to serve others for Christ’s sake, our spiritual gifts will come to the surface. As you explore your spiritual gifts, consider these steps:

• Ask God to increase your usefulness.
• Seek opportunities of service.
• Observe how other believers serve.
• Ask those you've served and those who serve with you to help you discern your spiritual strengths.
• Practice your gift even more. (1)

And remember, as we grow and mature in our intimate relationship with Christ, our gifts will grow, expand, and change as the Spirit draws us toward the realm of God’s eternal rule.

May every one of your spiritual gifts bless this community of Christ, the universal church, and the world.

Amen.

General resource: Lee C. Barrett, “Second Sunday After Epiphany: 1 Corinthians 12:1-11 – Theological Perspective,” Feasting on the Word: Preaching the Revised Common Lectionary (Louisville; Westminster John Knox Press, 2009), Year C, Volume 1, 254-258.

(1) Life Application Bible Commentary – 1 and 2 Corinthians (Carol Stream IL: Tyndale House Publishers, 2001) 12:8.

Unless noted otherwise, all scripture references are from The Common English Bible, © 2011 www.commonenglishbible.com. 
Copyright © 2016 First Presbyterian Church of Waverly, Ohio. Reprinted by permission.

Good News for All

Acts 8:14-17; Isaiah 43:1-7; Luke 3:15-17, 21-22

The story is told of a place which experienced a great drought. Water was so scarce that the Baptist was pouring baptismal water instead of dunking converts, the Roman Catholic priest was sprinkling infants at the baptismal font, and the Presbyterian pastor had resorted to dry cleaning.

The practice of baptism has had an interesting life over the church’s two millennia. And it all started in the Book of Acts. Two baptisms are often referred to, water baptism and Spirit baptism.

Our reading today occurs after some mighty work by Philip in Samaritan territory. His evangelical outreach resulted in quite a number of water baptisms. Peter and John hear about Philip’s good work and decide to go check it out. They discovered that the people had been baptized in the name of Jesus but had not experienced the presence of the Holy Spirit. So they laid hands on the new Samaritan believers who then experienced the indwelling of the Holy Spirit.

The church’s problem is that these two baptisms, if indeed they be two, occur in a variety of ways in the accounts of the Book of Acts. In Peter’s Pentecost sermon he tells the crowd that “each of you must be baptized in the name of Jesus Christ for the forgiveness of your sins. Then you will receive the gift of the Holy Spirit” (Acts 2:38).

Yet today’s reading implies that water baptism can exist without the follow-up gift of the Holy Spirit. But on the other side, when Peter is preaching to the household of Cornelius, in Acts 10, “the Holy Spirit fell on everyone who heard the word,” causing Peter to say, “Surely no one can stop them from being baptized with water,” and they were (Acts 10:44-48).

However, when Paul arrived in Ephesus, Acts 19,  and asked if the believers had received the Holy Spirit, they claimed ignorance of the Spirit and said that they had received John the Baptist’s baptism. Paul’s preaching and actions strongly suggests that water baptism, the laying on of hands, and the giving of the Holy Spirit, are one cohesive activity.

Across the centuries different understandings of baptism have developed as the Christian faith tradition grew, developed, and went in differing directions of theology and practice. Some, including many believers who call themselves evangelicals, have held that baptism by the Holy Spirit occurs for all believers at conversion, subsequently witnessed to by water baptism.

The Pentecostal traditions have insisted that there are indeed two different baptisms, a baptism by water and a later baptism by the Spirit. Wesleyan holiness movements tend to think of Spirit baptism as the “second blessing,” associating it with assurance of salvation and complete sanctification.

Roman Catholics believe that the Spirit is initially given at baptism but only is completed by a second gift of the Spirit at confirmation, which fosters Christian maturation, and is considered a sacrament equal to baptism.

Other traditions mix these two aspects together saying that baptism for forgiveness and the conferring of the Spirit are aspects of a single phenomenon. Reformed theology, where Presbyterians hang out, has generally resisted the separation of baptism by water and baptism by the Spirit, regarding the water baptism as an outward sign, not only of the washing away of sins, but also of the inward giving of the Spirit.

When we think about the evidence that the Acts accounts give us, it shouldn’t surprise us that the church has developed multiple understandings of water and Spirit baptism. While the ideal seems to be the combination water and bestowal of the Spirit, what seems to be clearest about it all is that the working of the Spirit cannot be neatly understood or controlled. We cannot make the Spirit of God obey human rules. To attempt to do is to engage in a Sisyphean task of pushing rope or herding cats.

Presbyterian theology has described both ordinary” and “extraordinary” means of grace. God has covenanted with humanity to make God’s grace available through certain practices. Ordinary means of grace include prayer, preaching, fasting, Bible reading and study, and the sacraments of the table and the font. However, God isn’t locked into those means of only. God is sovereign and may go about dispensing grace beyond the ordinary ways as God sees fit. Huldrych Zwingli, another 16th century Swiss Reformer, said that although the grace of regeneration through the Spirit is promised at baptism, the Spirit’s operation is not confined only to baptism. We can boldly trust that spiritual regeneration is promised with our baptism, but we need not despair should God's Spirit choose to work in another way.

A second important thought arises from today’s reading: the reception of the Spirit is not a bonus supplement to the Christian life but is absolutely essential to it. For the Samaritans, John and Peter must complete the baptismal act initiated by Philip. The Christian life would be fatally deficient and deformed without renewal by the Spirit. The bestowal of the Spirit is not an extra measure of grace intended for a group of the spiritually elite but is a blessing granted to the whole church. Without the enlivening power of the Spirit, the church would not exist.

What is even more crucial about the events of today’s reading is its setting. The Samaritans shared cultural roots with the Jews, but were despised by them as having abandoned some key aspects of Jewish religious tradition. Philip crossed a religious, cultural and social boundary in his efforts to evangelize people who were outside the Jerusalem tradition.

The laying on of hands and pouring out of the Holy Spirit on the Samaritans is another building block in the Acts-attested foundation that the grace of God in Christ was meant for non-Jews and Jews alike. The people of God cannot be defined by racial, cultural, language or geographical divides. The Holy Spirit is inclusive. The good news of Christ’s saving activity is confirmed by the extravagant and uncontrolled gift of the Spirit to any and all whom God calls to faith. As Jesus told Nicodemus, “God’s Spirit blows wherever it wishes. You hear its sound, but you don’t know where it comes from or where it is going. It’s the same with everyone who is born of the Spirit” (John 3:8).

Through baptism we are physically and spiritually made one with God’s people in every time and place. Many of us don’t remember our baptisms because our parents took the responsibility to have us baptized and raised in the faith. Perhaps we do remember it because we have been told the story so often that we have incorporated all the details into our own self-disclosing story. Some of us were baptized at a time when we made our decision to accept Christ as our Lord and Savior. Whether we remember our baptism or not, the important thing to remember is that we are baptized, we are incorporated into the body of Christ.

And if we have not yet been baptized, if we have not yet declared the work of the Spirit in our lives which brings us to Christ, perhaps now is the time to think of baptism in the present and future tense rather than an event in the past. If the Spirit has convicted you, who can stop you from being baptized with water?

Shortly we will prayerfully remember our baptism in water and seek to continue to be blessed by the Holy Spirit working in you. As you reflect on baptism today and this week, think of people whom you don’t know, people who cross your path in a store aisle, a doctor’s waiting room, or in a car at an intersection. Think about the possibility that although they may be very different from you, they are a child of God and could share with you the “beloved” name bestowed through water and Spirit. Water and Spirit. Spirit and water. However it all works, it is good news for all.

Thanks be to God.

General resource: Lee C. Barrett, “Acts 8:14-17 – Theological Perspective,” Feasting on the Word: Preaching the Revised Common Lectionary (Louisville; Westminster John Knox Press, 2009), Year C, Volume 1, 230-234.

Unless noted otherwise, all scripture references are from The Common English Bible, © 2011 www.commonenglishbible.com. 
Copyright © 2016 First Presbyterian Church of Waverly, Ohio. Reprinted by permission.

Three Noes Equal One Yes

Matthew 2:1-12; Isaiah 60:1-6; Ephesians 3:1-12

There is  story about a king of Balkh (now northern Afghanistan) named Ebrahim ibn Adam. Ebrahim was wealthy according to every earthly measure. At the same time, however, he sincerely and restlessly strove to be wealthy spiritually as well.

“One night the king was roused from sleep by a fearful stomping on the roof above his bed. Alarmed, he shouted: ‘Who’s there?’ ‘A friend,’ came the reply from the roof. ‘I’ve lost my camel.’ Perturbed by such stupidity, Ebrahim screamed: ‘You fool! Are you looking for a camel on the roof?’ ‘You fool!’ the voice from the roof answered. ‘Are you looking for God in silk clothing, and lying on a golden bed?’ ” The king was changed by this event, refocused his spiritual search, and became a most remarkable saint.(1)

The camel on the roof raises the Epiphany question, Where are you looking for God? This is an appropriate life question of life as we start a new year, just as its companion question, Where have you found God? Is a good way to review a passing year. Our readings today raise the camel-on-the-roof question in one form or another. Each one is a camel-on-the-roof reminder that God is not to be found where the world’s princes and powers reside. God will more likely be found in humble kitchens than in royal parlors. Each text calls us to be like the king's friend, willing to make a fool of ourselves asking the camel-on-the-roof question to a world busy seeking God in all the wrong places, willing to rouse the world with the message of “Arise! Shine! Your light has come.”

There is another Arabic story, “Seventeen Camels,” that tells of a man who died and left his seventeen camels to be divided among his three sons. One was to receive one ninth; another one half; and the third son one third of the camels. Seventeen camels, however, aren't evenly divisible by three. The three sons argued long and loud about what to do. In desperation they agreed to let a certain wise man decide for them. He was seated in front of his tent with his own camel staked out back.

After hearing the case, the wise man took his own camel and added it to the other seventeen camels. He then gave th first son one-ninth of the eighteen, or two camels. To the second son he gave one half, or nine camels. To the third son he gave one third, or six camels. On top of it all, he still had his own camel left. (2)

Many of us try to find God and solve the problems of life by logical, calculating schemes that insure we receive our share. But God is to be found in receiving, not grasping; in giving, not claiming our rights; in the simple, not the ponderous; in the everyday, not the once in a lifetime.

If we are looking for God in the midst of getting or in the midst of thinking about ourselves first, we won’t find God. That’s a problem if we claim to be believers. If believers can’t find God, there has to be something wrong.

Epiphany is about God becoming visible in the world. If we look at the series of gospel readings for the next six weeks, they are all about the world realizing who Jesus is.

Let’s work backwards to today. The reading for the last Sunday after Epiphany is the account of Jesus and three disciples on the mountain when Jesus is transformed before their eyes. The vision is sealed with God’s words, “This is my Son, my chosen one. Listen to him!” (Luke 9:35). These are an echo of the words we will hear next week in the reading about Jesus’ baptism when a voice from heaven declares, “You are my Son, whom I dearly love; in you I find happiness” (Luke 3:22).

In between those readings, Jesus attends a wedding where witnessed by the servants he turns water into wine. Then Jesus attended his home synagogue in Nazareth where he reads a passage from Isaiah about being anointed by the Spirit and announces that the prophet’s words are fulfilled in the congregants’ hearing. The people, many of whom have known him since he was a lad, reject his revelatory message, and call on him to remember who they know him to be. Rebuffed by his reminder that Elijah preached and healed among non-believers, they run Jesus out of town.

The people most equipped to recognize Jesus failed to see him. And those least qualified to identify Jesus had an innate sense that he was the Lord.

The magi are part of this upended procession of those unlikely to recognize Jesus. They readily recognize him as more than another child. They know that he is beloved and special, even if they don’t have the theological framework on which to hang their belief. They have three reasons for not being expected to know Jesus.

They are not wise men in the traditional sense. They are magi, stargazers, astrologers, astronomers, seers. They observe the heavens for portents and omens, for signs of impending blessing or misfortune. People who didn’t understand what the magi were talking about may have thought that they were magicians, something like the church’s ill-conceived responses to Copernicus in the 16th century and Galileo in the 17th century. The magi are learned in the prophetic literature of the surrounding cultures. They put it all together and tried to make sense of it. That is not a basis of wisdom, just thoughtful forecasting.

The magi are not kings. They may have access to costly gifts, but that doesn’t make them kings. They rule over nothing other than the predictions they derive from reading star charts. In today’s world they might be astronomers and physicists working for NASA. In fact, they were probably being overly forward in asking Herod about the king they were seeking, as they would have had no reason to have access to a king.
And the magi were not believers. All sorts of suggestions are made about what their foundational beliefs might have been. It doesn’t really matter. They were not followers of the Hebrew God. Any knowledge they had of Judaism was purely esoteric. They were not believers, but they recognized Jesus as a king without equal. And they knew that his presence was a threat to the existing order of things. They knew that Herod’s interest was not sincere and that Jesus would come to outshine Herod or his successors.

So because the magi were not wise in the usual way, because they were not kings, and because they were not believers in the God of the Jews, their witness has credibility. They believed when people did not and would not, people who would go to great lengths ultimately to disprove Jesus. So the three nots or noes of the magi equal a yes which has rung through heaven and earth ever since they followed the star. Their honoring of Jesus flies in the face of the subsequent stubborn ignorance of his neighbors and Herod’s fear and wanton hatred. Jesus is the light which has come into the world and the darkness of the world – hatred, fear, evil, greed, ignorance – has not extinguished it.

President David Esterline of Pittsburgh Theological Seminary wrote this week that a colleague reminded him of words a rabbi wrote to his congregation in New York just after the terrorist attacks of 9/11. In response to the question, what is the remedy to wanton hatred? The rabbi wrote,

“Wanton love. Raw, cold-blooded, fanatical, baseless, relentless hatred can be matched and combated only with pure, undiscriminating, uninhibited, unyielding, baseless, unsolicited love and acts of kindness. But we need not just plain love. We need love that costs us. Love that we get nothing back for. . . And when we do our part God will surely do His part to protect us and transform our world to the one we all hope and yearn for, one that will be filled with His glory, like the waters fill the ocean” (Isaiah 11:9). (3)

That is what Epiphany is about – declaring to the world that hatred will lose and love will win. That love is embodied in the child born in Bethlehem and is let loose in the world every time a person comes to belief in Jesus, son of Mary, son of God.

We are agents of Epiphany. We are not wise (in fact, Paul described us as foolish). We are not kings. Even in our relative states of knowledge, wealth, and prosperity, we are simple people, trying to scratch out our lives in fear and trembling. We differ from the magi in that we are believers. Is that a disadvantage? Our belief can be lackadaisical because it is so easy to take everything for granted. Or is our belief an advantage, because we know so deeply what the magi came to realize when they met Jesus?

It’s a challenge for us to keep the faith as exciting and vital as it was experienced by shepherds and magi, and later on by sinners and foreigners. The challenge can be met as we live as reflectors of the Epiphany star-shine, as we reflect the light of Christ to the world around us and around those whom we send out to tell the good news as the magi undoubtedly did when they returned to their homes. No one is going to tell our news. We and others like us have to do it, even if we begin as unbelievers, like the magi.

Arise! shine! Your light has come; The Lord’s glory has shone upon you. (Isaiah 60:1).

(1) Walter G. Burghardt, Still Proclaiming Your Wonders: Homilies for the Eighties (New York: Paulist Press, 1984), 55.
(2) Homiletics, January 6, 1991, http://www.homileticsonline.com/subscriber/btl_display.asp?installment_id=2600 
(3) David Esterline, “Pittsburgh Theological Seminary President’s Communique," January 1, 2016, https://gem.godaddy.com/p/824e07?fe=1&pact=524-128931003-8492433225-3c747678d2024d940f0151aa4c536c91c216286d 

Unless noted otherwise, all scripture references are from The Common English Bible, © 2011 www.commonenglishbible.com. 
Copyright © 2016 First Presbyterian Church of Waverly, Ohio. Reprinted by permission.

Christmas Clothes

Colossians 3:12-17; Psalm 148; Luke 2:41-52

Did anyone get new clothes for Christmas? Keeping up our tradition buying each other something very similar or exactly alike, Paula and I surprised each other with Cleveland Cavaliers tee shirts this year. Recently the hosts of “Good Morning America” had an ugly Christmas sweater contest. It was hilarious. Michael, the pre-teen in the newspaper comic strip “For Better or for Worse,” said yesterday that it was a good Christmas because he didn’t get any books, educational toys, or clothes.

Clothes given at Christmas often take a lot of guff. After all, for many of us socks, underwear, ties, and other items of clothing are not exciting in a world of toys, books (some of us are avid readers), video games, and other electronic gadgets.

Clothing is important. Some clothing is occupational, like the armor Paul talks about in his Ephesian letter. Some clothing sets the tone for a particular setting, such as the business suit, the little black dress, the overalls. Some clothing is simply comfortable, convenient, or useful. Luke was sure to mention the swaddling clothes or baby blanket in which the newborn Jesus was wrapped.

We are still celebrating Jesus’ birth, but for a moment, let’s fast forward in his life to the scene Luke has given us of the twelve-year-old Jesus. Can you imagine this story in today’s world? I expect the teenage Jesus would be wearing jeans and a tee shirt. I wonder what would be on his tee shirt. Would it be a logo for a pop band? Would it be a number jersey for some sports team? Would his shirt have some cryptic or pithy saying on it? I can’t imagine him wearing a polo shirt with designer’s logo on it. He might have a “Life’s Good” shirt. I think he would agree with that.

Given today’s marketing and advertising emphasis, we could almost imagine Paul offering a line of tee shirts with the list of clothing attributes which he gave the Colossian believers: “compassion, kindness, humility, meekness, and patience.” Paul had just gotten done writing to the church about all things that they needed to give up or take off like dirty clothing. Then he told them that in Christ they have clothed themselves “with the new self, which is being renewed in knowledge according to the image of its creator” (3:11).

Paul did not give the Colossian church members a fashion dress code for what to wear to church. The apostle is not concerned as we so often are with whether blue jeans have any place in the sanctuary. The apostle is concerned with the way we dress our souls.

When Paul refers to taking off old clothing and putting on the new, he is not only writing metaphorically. His image reflects an early Christian practice of baptism. Individuals coming to be baptized would remove their old clothing before entering the baptismal waters. When they came out of the water, they were clothed in a new robe, signifying the new life they had received in Christ.

This new clothing confirms and shapes the unity of all believers in Christ. The virtues that the epistle commends are entirely social. Right dress is not a matter of individual piety; it is a matter of how we relate to one another in Christ (since of course Christ is all in all).(1)

David L. Bartlett, in his Feasting on the Word commentary on this section of Paul’s letter, says that the first half of this section offers three great realities that make possible the well-dressed congregation.(2)  First of all, believers are “God’s choice”; that is, “God chose you to be the holy people he loves” (New Living Translation). The call of God cannot be ignored. There is nothing like it. It is not like when teams were being chosen in junior high gym class and we were the last to be selected. God has chosen us from the beginning, not the end. We are God’s.

The second reality in Bartlett’s view is that of Christian love. In some ways Paul wrote more explicitly here than he did in the poetic images about love in1 Corinthians 13. Those were directed to the individual. To the Colossian believers Paul spoke about community and the harmony which incorporates forbearance, positiveness, and forgiveness. As God’s chosen, they are to imitate Christ’s compassionate, forgiving attitude, let love guide their lives, let the peace of God rule in their hearts, be thankful in all things, and keep God’s Word in them at all times.

Bartlett’s third reality is Christ’s peace—Christ’s shalom. Colossians picks up the familiar Pauline symbol of the church as the body and here makes clear what binds the members together: the peace that can only be the gift of God. To live in peace would not suddenly eliminate all differences of opinion, but it would require that everyone work together despite their differences. Human effort won’t accomplish this. It requires God’s help to arbitrate and enable people to get along. God calms our troubled hearts so that we can better relate to others.

The word “control,” or “rule” as found in other translations, comes from the language of athletics: Paul wanted the believers to let Christ’s peace be an umpire or referee in their hearts. Peace would arbitrate and thereby restrain any of the passions of the old nature that might try to resurface. Peace would settle any friction and strife so the believers could remain strong and unified. If peace rules believers’ hearts, then it will govern their entire lives and, by extension, the life of the church.(3)

So our Christmas clothes, the clothes Christ gave us through his birth, ministry, death, and resurrection have three aspects. God chose us, not we chose God; love connects everyone; and peace must begin within us in order to exist between us.

Clothes have another aspect. Remember having paper dolls on which you could put different outfits. In this high tech age, they still make paper dolls. Paula and I saw some while shopping this month. Jesus is not to be treated as a paper doll to be dressed as we want him to be dressed. There are a number of outfits that people dress Jesus in which don’t match up with the Jesus of scripture.

Some dress Jesus as the guru, a wise, winsome, slightly supernatural figure who fits nicely alongside other religious titans like Buddha, Mohammed, Vishnu, and others. Jesus, born in Bethlehem, is far more than a wise person. He wears the clothes of salvation.

Some people dress Jesus in the red-letter style, devoid of the righteous God of the Old Testament. But there’s more to Jesus than nice stories and pithy statements. His words and actions beyond the red letters align him closely with the God who demands self-sacrificial living over ritual sacrifices of grain and animals. Jesus, born in Bethlehem, wears the clothes of deeply revealing truth.

Others dress Jesus in red, white, and blue. He will usher in a revival which will return us to the perceived glory of days gone by. Unfortunately the Jesus of the gospels doesn’t point to the past but forward to the fulfillment of the kingdom. Jesus, born in Bethlehem, is clothed in future kingdom glory.

There are those who dress Jesus as if he were Dr. Phil, a fix-whatever-is-wrong-with-you Jesus. The problem is that what we want fixed isn’t what is wrong is us, only a symptom. A Jesus who will fix your marriage, shape you up for your next job interview, or ensure your kids make it into Harvard is, in the end, a disappointing deity preaching a moralistic, therapeutic deism that doesn’t save. The real Jesus, born in Bethlehem, is not dressed in a costume of principles, but is dressed in wholeness and honesty.

There are lots of other costumes people put on Jesus. But because our Christmas clothes are woven with God’s initiating love for us, our connecting love for each other, and with Christ’s peace reigning in our hearts, the Christmas clothing that Christ gets to wear is the eternal joy of having us as part of the faithful community singing, “Gloria in excelsis deo,” and telling everyone who will listen what happened in our hearts the night Jesus was born.

Thanks be to God. Amen.

(1) David L. Bartlett, “Colossians 3:12-17 - Homiletical Perspective,” Feasting on the Word: Preaching the Revised Common Lectionary (Louisville: Westminster John Knox Press, 2009) Year C, Volume 1, 159, 161.
(2) Bartlett, ibid., 161.
(3) Life Application Bible Commentary – Philippians, Colossians, & Philemon (Carol Stream IL: Tyndale House Publishers, 2001), 218

Unless noted otherwise, all scripture references are from The Common English Bible, © 2011 www.commonenglishbible.com. 
Copyright © 2015 First Presbyterian Church of Waverly, Ohio. Reprinted by permission.