Archives for 2013

A Strange Christmas Story

December 29, 2013 By Andy James

a sermon on Matthew 2:13-23
preached on December 29, 2013, at the First Presbyterian Church of Whitestone

When you think of the Christmas story, what comes to mind?

There are of course the great biblical stories of Matthew and Luke that tell about the birth of Jesus, and the beautiful opening words of the gospel of John that put a more theological spin on the beginning of Jesus’ life. Then there are the more contemporary stories that define Christmas for many of us, ranging from simple tales that give wonderful portraits of a spirit of giving to the crazy family stories that get most of their meaning from the characters involved in them. And then there’s A Christmas Story, a movie from 1983 that has built such a broad following over the last few years that one cable channel shows it on continuous repeat for twenty-four hours on Christmas Eve and Christmas Day every year! Personally, I have yet to sort out exactly why this movie has so many fans—its storyline focuses on an elementary school-aged boy who desperately desires an air rifle for Christmas, even as everyone around him repeatedly warns him, “You’ll shoot your eye out.”

Yet even this strange movie about a boy and a BB gun seems more connected to our Christmas stories than our reading this morning from Matthew. This terrifying story is a strange postscript to the stories that have defined this last week or month or more for us. It features no shepherds and no angels, and the wise men have already gone home. There are no heavenly songs offered here, no manger welcoming shepherds and sheep, no Mary pondering these things in her heart. Instead, this Christmas story brings us a murderous and jealous king-in-name-only, Herod, installed by Rome to make the Jews feel like they had some control over their own destiny, who responds to a perceived threat to his power with infant genocide.

After Herod learned of Jesus’ birth through the visit of astrologers who had come to pay homage to the child born King of the Jews, he sent them on their way to Bethlehem with instructions to return and report to him about this child. When they went home by another road, Herod was so angry and frustrated that he ordered the death of all the children two years and younger in Bethlehem so as to make sure that this threat to his power would not survive. But Herod’s seeming cunning did not match up to God’s providence for Jesus and his parents. After the departure of the wise men, an angel appeared to Joseph and warned him of Herod’s impending search for Jesus. Armed with this news, Joseph took Mary and Jesus and fled to Egypt, where they stayed until Herod died and an angel delivered word to Joseph that it would be safe for them to return home to Israel. However, when Joseph learned that Herod’s son Archelaus was in power, he feared that this son would share a little too much in common with his murderous father and so resettled not in his hometown of Bethlehem but in Nazareth, where Jesus grew up.

This is a strange Christmas story, to say the least. Not only does it leave out the shepherds and the angels and others that have become an integral part of our idea of the Christmas story, this word from Matthew shifts our focus from birth to death, from celebration to mourning, from joyous new life to horrible untimely death, from hope to uncertainty and fear. This story of the massacre of innocent children just seems so very much out of place in our Christmas celebrations—yet the carol we just sang that lifts it up has been around for hundreds of years, and many medieval celebrations of Christmas included this story as an integral part of their tellings of the birth of Jesus.

Today, though we may try to push it out of our minds, this story serves as a reminder that Christmas just isn’t beautiful and simple and joyful for everyone. For some people, this story of what happened after Christmas is perhaps closer to the reality of their lives at this time of year. When everyone seems to be celebrating, some of us face tremendous challenges in our lives. When many of us are celebrating with our families, some of us are remembering the pain and struggle and sorrow in our family experiences—past abuse, neglect, or alcoholism; present depression, fighting, separation and divorce, or distance; the struggles of difficult relationships, political or religious differences, or expectations not met; chronic or sudden illness; recent or impending death; or some mix of any or all of these. When many of us are sharing gifts with great abandon, some of us are struggling to explain why there are fewer or no gifts this year—or even worse, trying to keep up appearances to hide more difficult realities below the surface. When many of us are rejoicing because God has come to dwell with us, some of us are crying out wondering where God is in the midst of our pain, sorrow, and doubt.

While these experiences and feelings are present all year long, this season magnifies them all the more as so many messages in our culture say that Christmas should be perfect and beautiful. We hear that there’s “no place like home for the holidays” even if that home is emotionally unhealthy or physically unsafe for us to go there. We hear that “Santa Claus is coming to town” even if there is no money for gifts this year. We sing that “everybody knows a turkey and some mistletoe / help to make the season bright” when there is no turkey or mistletoe to be found or when darkness of any sort casts its shadow over this season.

Stories like this one from Matthew serve to remind all of us that there is more to Christmas than these visions of seeming perfection—and that God is the midst of all of our Christmases, that the incarnation of God in Jesus is for our perfect Christmases as well as our broken ones, that God’s presence is with us whether our Christmas is wonderful or awful or somewhere in between. At Christmas, God took on our flesh and bone and blood in Jesus Christ, not to make us immediately perfect but to know the fullness of our human life, not to paper over our pain and hurt but to understand them and experience them, not to fix us overnight but to fix us for good, not to transform us in spite of what we want but to push us and drag us and guide us into something new, maybe slowly, maybe quickly, but always certainly and hopefully and joyfully. And even when the powers of this world threaten to destroy this new light in Jesus, this story reminds us that God’s power is stronger than any of them, that God’s work of bringing justice and peace cannot be overcome by evil in the world, that even in his infancy Jesus would face great challenge and yet emerge victorious.

So as this Christmas continues, may God’s presence be in the midst of it all, in the midst of our joy and our mourning, in the face of despair and hope, in the glimpses of perfection that fit our best images of Christmas and in the times when we can only hope and pray that God’s grace and mercy will take hold soon, for God’s new life came into our world in Jesus Christ, to begin making all things new and make space for all of us to join in, here and now and always, until Jesus comes again.

Lord, come quickly! Amen.

The Gift That Keeps on Giving

December 24, 2013 By Andy James

a sermon on John 1:1-14
preached on Christmas Eve 2013 at the First Presbyterian Church of Whitestone

When I was growing up, it would be about right now on Christmas Eve that we would be opening presents. In my mom’s family, we open most of our gifts on Christmas Eve, then Santa Claus brings us a few more on Christmas morning, though we’ve had to negotiate a new arrival time with Santa in the years since I’ve been working on Christmas Eve and can’t join them until Christmas Day! Every year, I remember some conversation about the schedule—when I was younger, it was usually me trying to get to the gifts earlier!—but it almost always worked out the same way: we would go across the street to my grandparents’ church for a 5:00 service, come home, finish preparations, and eat dinner about 7:00 or 7:30, then move into opening presents around 8:30 or 9:00. In the end, whatever the scheduled worked out to be, the gifts were really the focus of the evening. That’s what it’s all about, right? Why would we think of doing anything else on this holy night other than opening presents??!!

More and more, this whole Christmas season becomes about the gifts—about the things that we exchange with our family and friends, about making sure that the value of the gift we give matches that of the gift that we receive, about finding the perfect gift for the right price with the least amount of effort. In the end, there is something about all these gifts and presents that matters, but only as much as they point to the real gift of Christmas: the gift of God coming to us in Jesus.

Our reading from John tonight takes us right there. It may not be the familiar story of angels and shepherds in a manger, but ultimately it tells us everything we need to know:

In the beginning was the Word,
and the Word was with God,
and the Word was God.
He was in the beginning with God.

All things came into being through him,
and without him not one thing came into being.
What has come into being in him was life,
and the life was the light of all people.

The light shines in the darkness,
and the darkness did not overcome it….

And the Word became flesh and lived among us,
and we have seen his glory,
the glory as of a father’s only son,
full of grace and truth.

This is the real gift of Christmas, the gift that really matters, the gift that keeps on giving: the presence of God who comes into our world, who walks and talks with us, who eats and drinks with us, who laughs and cries with us, who puts up with us, who loves us and cares for us beyond our wildest dreams.

This is the best gift we could ever imagine: the presence of God among us, the vision of Immanuel, God-with-us, the reality of God visible and available and living right here, on earth, beside us, among us.

The greatest gift ever is that God comes to us, living a human life, struggling human struggles, walking the same ground and breathing the same air and drinking the same water.

God set aside God’s power, glory, and honor so that we could come close to that power, glory, and honor in Jesus, so that we could not just glimpse God from afar but encounter God up close, in person, face to face. As Quaker theologian Elton Trueblood is said to have said, “The historic Christian doctrine of the divinity of Christ does not simply mean that Jesus is like God. It is far more radical than that. It means that God is like Jesus.” (quoted by Rachel Held Evans) When we encounter Jesus, the ultimate gift, we encounter God.

So on this Christmas Eve, when it is so easy to look to our gifts to give our lives meaning and hope, we can turn our eyes instead to this ultimate gift that changes everything about our giving—not simply because we’ll never measure up to it but because this gift is truly unlike any other before or since. When we welcome this gift at its fullest, we can do nothing but set aside the presents that so easily define this season and instead embrace the presence of God in Jesus Christ, the Word made flesh, dwelling among us, the presence that really matters. We will find this presence of God around us and among us—maybe in the time we spend with family and friends over the coming days, maybe in the people who care for us and help meet our needs, maybe in the people who inspire us and challenge us and even frustrate us, and maybe even at this table, in this simple meal, where we trust that God will host us and meet us.

The presence of God in Jesus, embodied in these and countless other ways, gives us confidence and hope of God’s presence each and every day, not just to make us feel better or to get through the difficult moments of our lives but most of all so that we can be the presence of God for others. Ultimately the gift of God in Jesus Christ keeps on giving to us and to all people as we give it to others, because we take the light of Christ that we have received and reflect it out to others, because we embody the love of God in our daily lives, because we are not afraid to share this wonderful gift of glory, grace, truth, and love with everyone we meet.

So as we go forth to celebrate this Christmas, exchanging gifts with our family and friends and celebrating a bit of time away from the everyday routine, may the gift of God’s presence in Jesus Christ be the only present that we need, and may we share the wonder of God’s love with everyone we meet, in word and in deed, this Christmas and always, until all things are made new in Jesus Christ our Lord.

Glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace to all, forever and ever! Amen and amen.

Signs and Wonders

December 22, 2013 By Andy James

a sermon on Isaiah 7:10-16 and Matthew 1:18-25 for the Fourth Sunday of Advent
preached on December 22, 2013, at the First Presbyterian Church of Whitestone

Poor forgotten, ignored Matthew. In our world, it’s easy to forget that someone other than Luke tells us the story of the birth of Jesus. Matthew’s telling that we heard this morning is so different from the other, more familiar version that it’s maybe even fair to wonder if we’re talking about the same story at all! In Luke, we have a bunch of angels—several special messengers sent to speak to Elizabeth, Zechariah, and Mary, not to mention the “multitude of the heavenly host” who announce the birth of Jesus to the “shepherds abiding in the fields, keeping watch over their flocks by night”—but in Matthew, Joseph is the only one to receive heavenly guidance from these angelic messengers amidst the strange situations surrounding Jesus’ birth. In Luke, the birth story starts out with a long journey from Nazareth to Bethlehem, but in Matthew, Joseph and Mary already live in Bethlehem and travel only after Jesus is born as they flee to Egypt to avoid Herod’s murderous intentions and eventually move to Nazareth. In Luke, the family of the newborn is visited right away by shepherds from the nearby countryside, but in Matthew, it takes a while for the wise men from the east to make their way to Bethlehem.

Our cultural visions of the Christmas story and even many of our Christmas carols try very hard to blend the two different gospel stories together, to merge all their different details and paper over all their differences, but today for once I want to give Matthew his due. Luke will get equal time in just a couple days, but today we set aside the familiar shepherds and angels and listen instead for this incredible sign and wonder in a slightly different way.

Matthew has to set a bit of context for the birth story, but he tells us a lot less than Luke, too. The only thing that precedes this story in Matthew’s gospel is an account of Jesus’ ancestry, tracing his roots back to the most historic Jewish fathers Abraham, Isaac, and David. But then it seems that the fatherly connections don’t really matter at all! All those ancestral connections seem to be only for appearance’s sake, as we quickly learn that Jesus’ earthly father Joseph—the one with all those connections to Abraham, Isaac, and David—wasn’t really his father at all! In fact, Joseph nearly abandoned Jesus and his mother Mary when he found her pregnant before they lived together. Once he got word of her pre-marriage pregnancy, clearly because of another man, he was prepared to leave them behind entirely because he was “a righteous man and unwilling to expose her to public disgrace.” In our day and age at least, those sound like code words: Joseph didn’t want to be responsible for another man’s child, nor did he want to be married to a woman who would not be married to her child’s father.

Thankfully God stepped in and sent an angel in a dream—the first of the three heavenly messengers who speak to Joseph in Matthew—to clarify things a bit. There was no need for him to desert Mary, “for the child conceived in her [was] from the Holy Spirt.” The angel went on to tell Joseph that this child would be a son and that he should name him Jesus. Joseph did as the angel instructed, marrying Mary right away, walking with her through her pregnancy and childbirth, taking her son as his own and naming him Jesus, just as the angel had instructed.

Alongside this narrative, Matthew adds in a bit of commentary and explanation. From the very beginning, Matthew’s version of the gospel story seems to place great emphasis on Jesus’ connections to the people of Israel. Matthew’s record of Jesus’ ancestral line goes through David, the great and legendary king of Israel, and ends with Abraham, the beloved father of this great nation. And Matthew often links his stories to those of the prophets so that Jesus is more directly connected to their cries for redemption and new life. Here, in telling about the birth of Jesus, Matthew connects this story to the words we heard from the prophet Isaiah this morning. These words had originally been offered to King Ahaz of Judah while the nation was under siege by Israel. Israel had hoped to replace King Ahaz with someone more favorable to them who would make an alliance against the outside power Assyria, the nation that would ultimately destroy Israel and scatter its people all across the Mediterranean region. Isaiah’s words of comfort to Judah during this siege were certainly not originally focused exclusively on a child who would come centuries later, for the people and the king were looking for a sign of God’s intervention in the short term, someone who would give them hope that they would emerge safely from the siege, someone who would make it clear that God was with them—Emmanuel—in the midst of a very difficult time. Exactly who this child was in Isaiah’s own time remains the subject of much debate among scholars, but Isaiah clearly had someone else more contemporary and immediate in mind in addition to any thought of Jesus.

While some might argue that reading the prophet in this way and listening for his original intent beyond his appropriation by Matthew takes away from the prophetic connection to Jesus, I think this reading ultimately gives us space to think about these things for ourselves. It reminds us that Isaiah’s words might having meaning and importance for us in our own time, that we too are looking for a sign of God’s presence, that we also long for Emmanuel, God-with-us, that Jesus comes to us in this season, too. Just as Isaiah prophesied that a young woman would bear a son who would be a sign of God’s presence, just as Matthew suggested that Jesus was the embodiment of this promise in his own time, these stories of God’s presence from Matthew and Isaiah remind us that there are signs of God’s presence among us in these days.

These signs may not be as earth-shattering as the birth of a Messiah. They may not be as controversial as the birth of a son out of wedlock. They may not fit into our assumptions of how God is at work or what God’s work should look like. These signs of God’s presence may be as small as a simple smile from an unexpected passer-by on a busy holiday street or as substantial as a major act by a prominent and powerful person to indicate God’s care and concern for the poor. These signs of God’s new life in our world may be as unnoticed as a small gift of a few dollars given to those in need or as impossible to miss as a world-changing gift that impacts the lives of millions of people around the world. And these signs of God’s Emmanuel may come to us in dramatic angel messages that are impossible to miss or in still, quiet voices that we might not hear if we are distracted by the busyness of these holidays.

Whatever they are, wherever we hear them, these signs are always too real to ignore and too important not to share, for they point beyond themselves to a sign and wonder beyond our wildest dreams. The ultimate sign, the ultimate gift, the ultimate mark of these days is the coming of God to dwell with us, not just in a little child born in the midst of troubled times in Israel 2700 years ago, not just in a little baby born out of wedlock in a small village in Palestine 2000 years ago, not just in a burst of light amidst these darkest days of winter, but each and every day when God’s presence and light shines on us anew to show us the depth and breadth of God’s amazing love, to show us the lengths to which God will step in and intervene in our world, and to show us that God is not finished with us yet, that there is something greater and newer ahead for us and all creation, that God can and will transform all things and send great light into our world.

So as we finish our Advent preparations and begin our Christmas celebrations, may God’s light break forth upon us to show us the signs of God’s presence in our lives, may we see the wonder of God’s amazing love breaking into our world, and may God give us voices to join with angels of all sorts to proclaim these things to others as we continue waiting and watching and hoping and praying and working for God’s light in Jesus Christ to shine in us and upon us and through us each and every day until he comes again. Lord, come quickly! Amen.

Joy for the Journey

December 15, 2013 By Andy James

a sermon on Luke 1:46-55 for the Third Sunday of Advent
preached on December 15, 2013, at the First Presbyterian Church of Whitestone

(This sermon begins with a wonderful video from Holy Moly! telling the story of Mary and Elizabeth. Due to copyright restrictions, I cannot show it here, but I nonetheless highly recommend it!)

I simply love this telling of this wonderful story of Mary and Elizabeth. It’s from the series that our children started using this fall in Sunday School called “Holy Moly!” that uses humor and animation—and surprising splashes of color—to tell familiar and formative stories of the Bible. I’ve heard some incredible musical settings of this story over the years, but there was something particularly special to me about this one. Maybe it was Mary’s journey from uncertainty to rejoicing that was so simply yet beautifully depicted. Maybe it was Elizabeth’s reaction to Mary’s arrival, her recognition of the spread of this child’s wonder across the whole earth even before his birth. Maybe it was the babies’ seeming recognition that something special was going on. Maybe it was Mary’s response of confidence amidst the criticism that she received from those she passed along the road. Or maybe it was the incredible color bursting into the land around Mary on her journey back home, echoing so beautifully the prophet’s promise that we heard in our reading from Isaiah this morning:

The wilderness and the dry land shall be glad,
the desert shall rejoice and blossom;
like the crocus it shall blossom abundantly,
and rejoice with joy and singing.

Whatever the reason for my love of this brief movie, ultimately I found it deeply compelling because of how beautifully it lifts up the theme of joy. Today, the third Sunday of Advent, is Gaudete Sunday. This Latin word for “rejoice” is the first word of one of the traditional lectionary readings for this day from Philippians—“Rejoice in the Lord always, and again I say, rejoice”—and so this whole Sunday has taken up this theme of rejoicing, from the celebratory music that means that we are getting very close to Christmas to our scripture readings that celebrate joy and even to the pink candle that symbolizes not Mary’s secret wish for a girl for her first child but rather the level of rejoicing that comes for all through the birth of this amazing child. Amidst all the darkness of our world, amidst all the gun violence, all the cold weather and snow and slush and gray days, amidst all the homelessness, all the pain, all the holiday blues, amidst all the brokenness, all the war and conflict, all the things that separate us from God and one another, amidst all the places where God’s presence seems so far away, there is still a light of joy because God is stepping in to make all things new in Jesus Christ.

That’s ultimately the point of this story of Mary and Elizabeth. These two women didn’t understand why—or especially even how!—they were pregnant.Mary was still a virgin, and Elizabeth was well beyond childbearing age. They were the subject of constant scorn and sadness from their friends and family and especially from those who didn’t know them. And in the face of all this external pressure they were enduring the usual pains and struggles of pregnancy in a time when the safety of mother and child were far less certain. Yet they still found reason to rejoice together, to look beyond the uncertainties and pain of their present circumstance to a time when God’s new life would be full and complete in the world. They found reason to share the joy that was promised to them in these children who were growing inside them. They recognized that what they were experiencing would not only be a gift to them and their families but to all people everywhere, so they could do nothing less than celebrate the incredible and transformative presence of God in the midst of this wonder in their lives and their world.

We may not have the kind of gift that Mary and Elizabeth shared that brought them to rejoice in this way, but as we make our way to God’s holy mountain along the journey of Advent, we too are called to look for places to rejoice as they did. People in this day and age aren’t as good at rejoicing as we might think. Most of my friends are as likely to throw a party to forget their troubles as they are to celebrate something good. Many of us are taught from an early age that we must be careful how and when we show off our achievements so that we can demonstrate proper humility and grace, stifling our joy for these good things in our lives. And it is too often the norm that one of us feels the need to hold back good news to avoid offending someone else.

Yet this song of Mary’s joy in our reading from Luke today tells us that our rejoicing is good and proper and right, not just because there is something good happening to her, but because there is good news for all creation that all things will be made new again. In Mary’s song, we see the amazing reality that rejoicing can change the world when God is at work in places near and far, when the hungry are filled with good things, when the powerful are set aside so that God’s power can shine through, when God’s mercy can be the driving force behind all good things, when the world can be turned upside down to make room for God to be at work making all things new.

As we join in this journey of Advent to this high and holy place on the mountain of God, as we set forth in these final days toward Christmas to remember the wondrous gift of God in Christ that comes to us, as we look for God’s new thing to become real in our world, too, I believe that we are called to open our eyes in new ways to God’s joyous work, to sort out how we can offer our own song proclaiming God’s justice and mercy, and to raise our voices with a joyful shout of thanksgiving and praise for the greatness and mercy of God who comes to us in Jesus at Christmas and who promises to come again to make all things new.

May our lives be songs of rejoicing for this new thing until all things are made new in Christ Jesus our Lord! Lord, come quickly! Amen.

The Holy Mountain

December 8, 2013 By Andy James

a sermon on Psalm 72:1-7, 18-19 and Isaiah 11:1-10
preached on December 8, 2013, the Second Sunday of Advent, at the First Presbyterian Church of Whitestone

I don’t remember exactly how it happened, but somehow during the fall semester of my senior year of college I managed to get a very coveted ticket to a public address by Nelson Mandela. At the time, I had become active in a student group committed to discussing issues of race on campus, and I was just beginning to understand a bit of the history of apartheid in South Africa and the importance of Mandela in dismantling it. On a cool November morning, a couple friends and I drove an hour or so up to Memphis, Tennessee, to hear Mandela speak in hopes that it would help us understand a bit more of our own history. My home state of Mississippi has a very unpleasant history of its own on matters of race that can fairly be described as a slightly less severe version of the apartheid that marked South Africa, and in those days thirteen years ago it had only recently begun to come to terms with the violence that had marked the Civil Rights Movement in the state 40 years earlier as some of the perpetrators of murder and violence were finally being brought to justice.

Nelson Mandela in Memphis, 2000.

My friends and I arrived well in advance of the publicized start time, but the church that seated 5,000 was so full already that we ended up in the next to last row of the balcony! The room was filled with schoolchildren who had been raising money and collecting books to present to Mandela to support charities in South Africa, and everyone was waiting to hear from this beloved international icon and peacemaker who had come to Memphis to receive the Freedom Award from the National Civil Rights Museum there. After a glorious introduction appropriate for such a figure, Mandela offered a brief address—of which I remember nothing in particular—yet it was clear that the 5,000 of us in that church had just experienced something we would never forget simply because we had heard this incredible man speak.

Nelson Mandela has been on many minds over the last few days after his death on Thursday, and I’ve found it difficult not to associate him in some way with the words that we hear in our scripture readings for today. These readings give us another image of life on God’s holy mountain, the grand and glorious destination of our Advent journey this year, the place awaited by generations where the fullness of God’s new creation will be revealed. According to Psalm 72 and Isaiah 11, this place will be filled with justice and peace. Here the poor will be judged with righteousness. Here faithfulness will be the belt that holds everything together. And here creatures will set aside their enmity and dwell together in deep and real and full peace.

The psalmist and Isaiah both describe a special and unique leader—perhaps a man like Mandela—who brings God’s people together into this beloved community. This leader judges the poor with righteousness and decides with equity for the meek of the earth. She defends the cause of the poor of the people, gives deliverance to the needy, and crushes the oppressor through this new and different way of life. He speaks a word that captivates everyone and invites a new way of justice to prevail. And this leader is guided all along the way by the spirit of the Lord that brings wisdom, understanding, counsel, might, and knowledge for the good of all creation. Isaiah identifies this leader as “a shoot… from the stump of Jesse,” and for centuries Christians have identified this one with Jesus, yet there are certainly others like Nelson Mandela who have also embodied large parts of these words over the centuries, ranging from some of the better kings of Israel and Judah to quiet and humble leaders around us who embody God’s way of justice and peace. All these women and men, though, ultimately point us not to themselves but to the way of life that leads us to this holy mountain. They help us to live lives that point others to this place. They give us courage to bring about big or little changes in our midst that will be our part in God’s work of setting aside all hurt and destruction. And they show us the way of faith, hope, and love as we join the journey to this holy mountain.

You see, the holy mountain that stands as the goal of our Advent journey is not a clear and definite place. We won’t find it on any human map. We can’t stop at a gas station and ask for directions to it. And even the best GPS won’t know the way to get there. While we get little glimpses of what life might look like on God’s holy mountain from texts like ours today, we need generous, just, and righteous leaders like Nelson Mandela to help us on the journey to this holy place. Faithfulness and peace are at the core of this community, and so a new and different way of life emerges where there is nothing to fear and the danger and pain and hurt that have divided people for generations can be set aside. Here all people have the things that they need as leaders put their attention on those who are in need, and prosperity comes for all through this attention to justice and righteousness. Ultimately there is no hurt or pain or destruction in this place, for instead the focus is on building up the whole community so that God’s transformation can take hold.

As beautiful and simple as all this seems, this way of life on God’s holy mountain is incredibly difficult for us to pull off. Even the most talented leaders like Nelson Mandela are rarely successful in bringing together the disparate factions of humanity that mark so much of our world. The beloved community that takes these things seriously and seeks to embody God’s preference for the poor and the divine emphasis on peace and justice is a direct threat to those who seem to hold great power and build their livelihood on division and strife. And even the occasional glimpse of the peaceable kingdom described here, with the fears of children and the created order set aside, disappears all too quickly when someone speaks up to give voice to the uncertainty that everyone else has kept silent.

Yet as hard as it is, the journey to God’s holy mountain demands that we set aside our fear and uncertainty and start the journey toward this way of new life as best we can, right here and right now. Some steps on this journey are big and huge and substantial, requiring dramatic change in our hearts and minds or the action of government and leaders to stop marginalizing the poor, dehumanizing those who are different from us, and ignoring the needs of those whom we’d rather not see. Some of the changes that are needed to help us get to God’s holy mountain are certainly beyond our immediate individual or even congregational reach, and the sad reality of our polarized political system of these days makes it unlikely that any of them will take hold anytime soon.

Yet the difficulty of these bigger changes that confound us in these days does not excuse us from changing things in the smaller corners of the world where we can make a difference. We can insist on fair treatment for those closest to us and work to embody a new way of justice and righteousness in those places where we have control or influence. We can let mercy and grace prevail in our judgments of others and especially the poor. We can advocate for those who do not have a voice in the halls of power so that they might enjoy the privilege of life abundant. We can set aside our cries for vengeance and retribution in favor of a new way of peace. And we can refuse to let fear control our actions and keep us from living together with those whom we simply assume are different. And throughout it all, we can pray for the spirit of the Lord to rest on us too, to bring us wisdom and understanding, to offer us counsel, might, and insight, to reshape our priorities and focus our hearts and minds on God as we make our way to God’s holy mountain.

While we can’t make the holy mountain of God happen on our own or overnight, we certainly can look for these and other little ways to be a part of God’s transformation of our world each and every day, and we can join in the legacy of people like Nelson Mandela and so many others who have given us such wonderful examples of this kind of life and living in their witness before us. So as we go on this journey to God’s holy mountain, may God open our eyes to the destination of our journey so that we can join in the work of peace, justice, righteousness, faithfulness, and deliverance and be a part of God’s new creation, walking in the light of the Lord each and every day until all these things take hold in each of us and in all creation through Jesus Christ our Lord. Lord, come quickly! Amen.