Andy James

Up on the Mountain: Seeing Something New

January 20, 2011 By Andy James

a sermon on Matthew 5:1-12 preached at the First Presbyterian Church of Whitestone on January 16, 2011

You may have noticed something a little different and strange about the pulpit this morning – there’s a little extra decoration around the base of it. You see, we’re up on the mountain today and over the next seven weeks, working our way through Jesus’ famous Sermon on the Mount, and I figured a little visual reminder of this might help us all to keep this in mind! Chapters 5-7 of Matthew’s gospel recount these famous words spoken by Jesus to his disciples and the crowds who followed him up the mountain, and in these three chapters we find a great deal of what stands at the center of the Christian message. Here on the mountain Jesus offered his disciples what has come to be known as the Lord’s Prayer. Here Jesus laid out the simple and beautiful beatitudes, nine statements of blessing for those we might least expect. Here Jesus called out the hypocrites for giving alms and offering prayers so that they might be seen doing it. Here Jesus conveyed his own version of what we have termed the golden rule: “In everything do to others as you would have them do to you.” Here Jesus suggested that judgment must be as much about the one making the judgment as it is about the one being judged. And here Jesus responded to different viewpoints on how to follow the law and prophets of the Hebrew scriptures by suggesting that the spirit and the letter of the law matter. Over the next seven weeks, we’ll look at these and other wonderful sayings of Jesus from this sermon that give us a vision of something new from up on the mountain, all concluding on Transfiguration Sunday, when we celebrate how Jesus himself was transformed on another mountain as a sign of the transformation that is possible for us too. And so we revisit these familiar words, hoping that the mountain will strengthen us and hold us fast in our faith, but nonetheless remembering that Jesus offered the Sermon on the Mount not to comfort the people and enshrine their way of life but rather to challenge them by offering a vision of something new.

Jesus opened his sermon up on the mountain with a provocative series of statements of blessing that we heard a few minutes ago, but I want to read them again, this time from that often-helpful paraphrase The Message.

You’re blessed when you’re at the end of your rope.
With less of you there is more of God and his rule.

You’re blessed when you feel you’ve lost what is most dear to you.
Only then can you be embraced by the One most dear to you.

You’re blessed when you’re content with just who you are – no more, no less.
That’s the moment you find yourselves proud owners of everything that can’t be bought.

You’re blessed when you’ve worked up a good appetite for God.
He’s food and drink in the best meal you’ll ever eat.

You’re blessed when you care.
At the moment of being ‘carefull,’ you find yourselves cared for.

You’re blessed when you get your inside world – your mind and heart – put right.
Then you can see God in the outside world.

You’re blessed when you can show people how to cooperate instead of compete or fight.
That’s when you discover who you really are, and your place in God’s family.

You’re blessed when your commitment to God provokes persecution.
The persecution drives you even deeper into God’s kingdom.

Not only that – count yourselves blessed every time people put you down or throw you out or speak lies about you to discredit me.
What it means is that the truth is too close for comfort and they are uncomfortable.
You can be glad when that happens – give a cheer, even! – for though they don’t like it, I do! And all heaven applauds.

And know that you are in good company.
My prophets and witnesses have always gotten into this kind of trouble.

While there is something important in each of these statements of blessing, I think that they are best understood when we read them as a whole, because the reality is that none of them are really about God showing particular blessing to those in a particular predicament. Instead, in the Beatitudes Jesus offers a broad stroke against the way the world appears to be and assumes to operate, insisting that God’s blessing is not for the rich and famous and powerful but belongs instead to those in greatest need and proclaiming that God is overturning the supposed wisdom of the world and putting forth a new and different way.

As such, Jesus makes it clear from the beginning of this time on the mountain that things look different here in this place where God’s new way – God’s kingdom – has started to take hold. The poor are the ones who will inherit all good things here. Those who mourn here will not be left alone in their grief. Those who trust God to free and redeem will be set loose from the bonds of injustice here. Those who hunger and thirst here will be filled and their thirst quenched. Those who show mercy and forgiveness will find it shared with them here. Those who live with integrity in body, mind, and spirit will find God at work here. Those who seek reconciliation and wholeness will find it in their life with God here. Those who are threatened because of their behavior that follows in this way will be at home in this place. And those who suffer because of Jesus’ own life and message can rejoice because that suffering is not the final word, just as it was not the final word for Jesus himself. In the end, though, blessing comes less from these individual things being realized and more from justice and peace becoming the norm, love and mercy prevailing always, and a vision of something new taking hold in the world.

Making this vision of wholeness and newness real isn’t as easy as it would seem. At one level, these are incredibly simple practices and moves for living that can seemingly be lived out so easily. It would seem easy to give up everything and be poor, to mourn, to trust God, to remain hungry and thirsty, to show mercy and forgiveness, to live with integrity, to seek reconciliation and wholeness, and all these other things. But if we take these words seriously, we see how difficult all these things really are. We see how hard it is for us to let go of our way of life, to trust that there is something more than what we can directly control, to show others the respect we demand for ourselves, to seek reconciliation rather than furthering brokenness, or to open ourselves to suffering for the sake of others.

The reality is that we will never reach this way of life on our own. No individual can fully embody this way of life. Even the most faithful among us struggle with sin and fall short of the fullness of life that God intends for us and our world. Even the true prophets among us will find it difficult to bring these blessings down from the mountain, and as one commentator puts it, “Even people in churches will regard the Beatitudes as impossible, impractical, and foolish.” (Stanley P. Saunders, Preaching the Gospel of Matthew)

The Beatitudes, then, call us to a way of life that we can’t make happen on our own – but that doesn’t make us exempt from trying to live them out, nor does it make it okay to just leave them for a day beyond our grasp. We can’t just pretend like they are some view of some promised land we will never reach or will only find once we are no longer in this world – the way of life Jesus proposed as he began this conversation up on the mountain must always be before us as our goal and hope.

But living the Beatitudes becomes possible, practical, and even wise when we live them together and trust that God will work through us to make all things new. When we seek to discern how to respond to the poor in spirit as a congregation, we are blessed. When we join those who mourn death and darkness and injustice in our world and start working to shine new light into these places, we are blessed. When we trust the wisdom of God above and beyond our own intelligence to guide our life together, we are blessed. When we seek to satisfy the real, deep hungers and thirsts around us, both physical and spiritual, we are blessed. When we show mercy and grace to one another and all the world, we are blessed. When we live integrated, faithful lives that are true to the creation whom God made us to be, we are blessed. When we make wholeness, healing, and peace possible in the relationships around us and demonstrate that in our life together, we are blessed. And when others hurt and persecute us or walk away from our fellowship because we live in these ways of wholeness and faithfulness rather than just checking off obedience to a series of rules and regulations, we are blessed.

Living the Beatitudes together isn’t easy, but it is what God intends – how God intends for us to demonstrate that the world does not have the final word, how God invites us to stand up and live in a new and different way, how God allows us to join in the new thing that Jesus proclaimed from atop the mountain. And so from this mount may we see a vision of the life God intends for us and seek to live in this way together every day even as we open our eyes to what God intends for us and our world and we wait and work for Jesus’ vision to become real through God’s work all around us.

Lord, come quickly! Amen.

a first draft

January 8, 2011 By Andy James

I’m taking the unusual step of posting my first draft of the sermon tomorrow in light of the events of today. I’m particularly appreciative of any comments you might have over the next ten hours or so as I continue to refine this. Thanks for participating in this sermon crowdsourcing!

Texts: Isaiah 42:1-9; Matthew 3:13-17

Yesterday morning, I had the privilege of speaking with a group of women and men at the First Presbyterian Church in Jamaica here in Queens about the process and practice of preaching. They are in the midst of a training program to explore and develop their gifts for ministry in that congregation, and as they begin their conversation about preaching, I talked with them about how I approach each week’s sermon. They asked me lots of great questions, but one of our conversations sticks out in light of everything else that happened yesterday. We talked a bit about what I’ve done when I’ve needed to change a sermon, and I noted that I have on occasion chosen to make major changes to my sermon on Saturday night or even Sunday morning.

Today is one of those days. About the same time I got home from that gathering in Jamaica, a gunman shot into a crowd who had gathered outside a supermarket to meet with their representative in the U.S. House of Representatives, and as you probably know, some nineteen people were shot, and six of those have died, including a federal judge who had stopped by to say hello. I spent a good bit of yesterday afternoon in shock, following the story on TV and online, paying probably too much attention to all the details, and tracking the various details about this deeply disturbing and troubling event. So today I can’t just talk about the baptism of Jesus in the same way I had planned to do before the events of yesterday.

One statement in all the events of yesterday stuck out to me in light of our scripture readings for today. The new speaker of the house, John Boehner, offered a simple and short statement in response, saying in part: “An attack on one who serves is an attack on all who serve.” His words are an important reminder that this sort of tragic violence is simply not acceptable.

But even more so, I think his words point us to the prophet Isaiah, one who proclaimed that servanthood is something that comes from God and that the true servant comes to bring justice and righteousness without violence or even a raised voice, showing us that God’s way is unlike our human ways and demands justice in the midst of incredible hope and peace. This servant is steadfast and faithful in seeking and establishing justice, and the earth longs for this to become real.

In light of the events of yesterday, I think our longings for justice to become real are deeper than ever – not just for those who committed this senseless crime to be brought to trial but for something new and different to take hold around us, for violence to ease and warfare to end, for a different way of thinking and being and most especially speaking to take root, putting aside the vitriol and hate on all sides, setting aside the language of violence that pervades so much of our culture when we make “targets” of politicians in the next election, “fight a battle” against illness, or even suggest that we should be “soldiers of the cross” in carrying God’s message to the world, but instead opening ourselves to God’s real and difficult work of bearing forth righteousness and justice into our world. And so the servant joins in this work, stepping up to the difficult task of making God’s way real in the world and standing alongside all those who serve in countless – even at times seemingly conflicting – ways to embody this faithful and persistent justice in the world.

The prophet makes this way of justice clear, but then he continues by speaking directly to the servant, offering words of encouragement and hope for the challenges ahead, and pointing to the hope of justice and peace as the primary purpose and goal of the servant’s work. The servant stands with a mandate from God to be something new, to place the covenant made with Israel into bodily, human form, to be accompanied by God’s presence in the midst of trial, to open a new way for all who face uncertainty, pain, and hurt, and to bring light to the darkness that too often covers the world. In the midst of such incredible pain and hurt, God acts in and through the servant to make all things new, to embody and spread comfort and hope and peace and wholeness into the places of harm and hurt, to stand with those are attacked in body, mind, and spirit, and to make it clear that no one who walks in this way of new life and service will stand alone.

In the end, that is the real important message of the baptism of Jesus for us, too – we do not face this way of life alone. The one whose birth we have celebrated together over the last few weeks – Jesus – was human just like us, lived and breathed and thought just like us, faced temptations just like us, walked and ran and sang and danced just like us, and died just as we will one day do. Most of all, Jesus was baptized just like us – the exact meaning of that baptism can and will be debated, but because we share in his baptism and his life and his death and his resurrection, we can be sure that we are not alone.

We are not alone when things get tough – when life is hard and death and uncertainty surround us, when the darkness of the world seems to close in, when peace and justice seem far off and uncertain, as we have seen all too much in recent days. In these moments, we are not alone because Jesus shares our baptism and makes us whole again.

But we are also not alone when we walk forth from this place as God’s baptized servants – when we struggle to live out the ways of peace and justice set forth for the servant, when we feel resistance to God’s call to step out in a new way of hope, when we need help to find persistence and hope in the midst of changing and uncertain times, and even when we see little glimpses of God’s light breaking into the darkness of our lives and our world. In these moments too, we are not alone because Jesus shares our baptism and invites us to join him in fulfilling all righteousness.

The days ahead for us as a nation will be difficult. We have a tremendous task of mourning ahead for those who died, and even at this early moment, there seems also to be some deeper reflection necessary as well. As Christian thinker Diana Butler Bass put it:

We need some sustained spiritual reflection on how badly we have behaved in recent years as Americans – how much we’ve allowed fear to motivate our politics, how cruel we’ve allowed our discourse to become, how little we’ve listened, how much we’ve dehumanized public servants, how much we hate.

But the good news of Jesus’ baptism is that he shares in this moment with us. He invites us to this conversation, he comforts us in the midst of our pain and sorrow and confusion and hurt, he shows us where we have gone wrong, he gives us grace and mercy for all our faults, he offers us wisdom for finding a new way, and he steps in to lead us there himself. May Jesus’ baptism that we celebrate today remind us of these waters that we share, waters poured out in mercy for a broken and fearful world as we face brokenness and fear head on, so that we might go forth to walk in the light and peace and justice of God each and every day. Lord, come quickly! Amen.

Going Home for Christmas

January 5, 2011 By Andy James

This is not a sermon but rather a real blog post! Who knew!!

As a single person, my best bet for spending time with other people during the holidays is with my parents, and since I’m an only child, that makes it all the more important that I be home for Christmas. As a pastor, though, I have responsibilities on Christmas Eve, so over the last several years I have grown accustomed to traveling on Christmas Day. My first Christmas as a pastor, Christmas Day was also a Sunday, and I ended up spending Christmas night 2005 in a hotel near the Cincinnati airport by myself – an experience I do not care to repeat. This year, the crazy weather up and down the East Coast threw a small wrench into my travel plans, but for once I was grateful for the travel difficulties. Along the way, I experienced two new ways of being home for Christmas.

First, on a quick flight from JFK to Washington, DC, I found myself sharing a row at the back of the plane, directly next to the engine and across from the lavatory, with a flight attendant commuting home after her shift had ended. She had just returned from a round-trip to Senegal, one of several west African routes that she works regularly. I mentioned very briefly my travel troubles around Christmas, and she certainly understood my experiences – she herself had been working as a flight attendant on international routes since 1971 and had spent many Christmases away from home. We shared many wonderful stories about travel strangeness like this, but her stories were incredible moments of finding some sort of “home for Christmas.” She recounted two experiences of being welcomed into homes in Italy and Austria – places where Christmas celebrations are often limited to immediate family, with even significant others of family members asked not to attend – where she was welcomed as one of the family. Even as a guest who looked very different and came from an entirely different culture, she received gifts from others in the family and was at one of the gatherings even seated at the place of honor next to the host! Her stories were incredible, and I will never forget the time we shared on that brief flight, fellow travelers from very different places and backgrounds who nonetheless found a little bit of home for Christmas together.

If that weren’t enough of a home for Christmas, I then had the privilege of sharing a couple hours with a Twitter friend and colleague in ministry, Leslianne Braunstein. Although we had conversed a bit on Twitter and discovered some mutual friends and experiences, we had never met in person until Christmas Day. My new itinerary called for a four-and-a-half-hour layover in Washington, and Leslianne graciously volunteered to spend some of it with me. So we sat in a virtually-empty restaurant at Reagan Airport and shared appetizers and incredible conversation for nearly two hours. Though we too came from different places even amidst our shared experiences, in that time together we found another glimpse of home for Christmas.

I eventually made it home with far less travel drama than I had anticipated – and I walked away with two wonderful stories. But even more, over the twelve days of Christmas this year, I have carried these moments with me as reminders that the home we find for Christmas may come when we least expect it, around people with very different experiences, in the midst of frustration and anxiety and uncertainty. Though I was very glad to make it home for Christmas this year, I was even more grateful to see some other visions of home along the way and to share them with wonderful people each and every step of the way.

As this Christmas season comes to an end, I hope that you found some glimpse of this kind of home somewhere along the way too. Thanks for letting me share my story of going home for Christmas.

The Other Side of Christmas

January 2, 2011 By Andy James

a sermon for the Second Sunday of Christmas on Matthew 2:13-23
preached at the First Presbyterian Church of Whitestone on January 2, 2011

Happy ninth day of Christmas! With the blizzard and all the other things swirling around us over the past week, it is easy to forget that our celebration of Christmas continues today and concludes only with Epiphany on Thursday and Baptism of the Lord next Sunday. These twelve days remind us that there’s more to the coming of Jesus than a baby born in a manger, angels appearing to shepherds, or even the journey of the wise men to Bethlehem, and our reading this morning from Matthew’s gospel is an incredible and even disturbing reminder of the other side of Christmas.

This truly unpleasant text shows up in the lectionary on the Sunday after Christmas every three years, just rarely enough that pastors can easily skip over it with a Christmas carol sing or pass it off to a guest preacher! Last Sunday, while relaxing at my parents’ house on the day after Christmas, we tuned in the downtown Methodist church’s weekly TV broadcast to find a young woman, their pastor to young adults, facing the challenges of preaching this text. She had drawn the short straw this year to preach on the day after Christmas, so she offered a simple proclamation of this strange text about mass murder in the midst of a season filled with joy. So today, we’re facing that text together, too, not so that I can just reuse her insights but because the light of our candles on Christmas Eve fades and the strains of our carols grow faint on the other side of Christmas as the real world creeps back into things and we have to make sense of love and hate in our world.

According to Matthew’s gospel, visitors came to Judea looking for Jesus after seeing a star in the east that indicated that the king of the Jews had been born. They started their search for the newborn king at the palace, where they learned little and only aroused the puppet king Herod’s attention. As they continued their search, Herod asked them to return and give him a full report on what they found, but after they found the child, they went directly home by another road.

So in our reading today, we hear that an angel of the Lord spoke to Joseph and directed him to flee to Egypt with Mary and his newborn son. They got away just in time. Once Herod figured out that the wise men were not going to help him put down this apparent threat to his reign, he decreed that all children in and around Bethlehem under age two were to be killed. As a side note, I think it is important to note that there is no historical record of this mass murder of about twenty children in this small village, but as one commentator puts it, “it is nevertheless consistent with what we know about Herod.” (R. Alan Culpepper, Feasting on the Word) He was known to have his enemies and even his friends ruthlessly punished for crossing him, and that commentator notes that he even commanded that upon his death “political prisoners should be killed so that there would be mourning throughout the land.” With this kind of king holding even limited power, Joseph, Mary, and Jesus remained in Egypt until they received word in another dream that Herod was dead. But Joseph was still concerned – Herod’s son Archelaus was his successor, and Joseph suspected that cruelty and oppression of Herod’s sort rarely skips a generation, so rather than returning to Bethlehem, they made a new home in Nazareth, in the region of Galilee, outside the reach of Herod and Archelaus. Finally settled in to their new home in Nazareth, Mary, Joseph, and Jesus could emerge from the other side of Christmas, yet they surely would not be the same as they tried to make sense of the love and hate they had witnessed.

Matthew suggests in his story that all these things happened to fulfill the words of the prophets and show that Jesus had been through all the trials of the Hebrew people – going down to Egypt, returning to the promised land, and continuing in his own version of exile – so that he could emerge to a new way of faithfulness even amidst the old stories (Stanley P. Saunders, Preaching the Gospel of Matthew), an important perspective for his first readers who were most likely steeped in Judaism. But there is something equally if not more important for us in these words to help us see that there is more to Christmas than dreams (and occasional realities!) of a white Christmas, visits from Santa Claus, or even a baby born in a manger.

The other side of Christmas is clear to many in our world, but we so rarely speak of it. Some people find the joy of this season so difficult in the midst of mourning, pain, and loss, as they face the season distant from those they love due to death, illness, or displacement. Others must travel to spend these days with friends and family as is the custom and requirement, only to find even the best-laid plans disrupted by snowstorms and airlines and other complications that we know all too well after this last week. But even these pale in comparison to the millions around our world who face harsh persecution and life in exile more directly as Jesus, Mary, and Joseph did, forced to move from their homes and families due to genocide, suffering, war, and religious or ethnic strife.

And so Matthew also offers us a story that reminds us that Jesus knew the other side of Christmas very, very well himself. Mourning, pain, and loss came right alongside his birth. Strange travels and new homes were part of his experience as an infant. Exile and displacement were his experience from his earliest months. In fact, I don’t think it is unreasonable to suggest that the prosperity and joy that stand as the ideal for us in these days were far from Jesus’ own experience. Even though he began his days with visitors from far away who brought him fine and extravagant gifts, Jesus lived much of his life like a refugee, wandering from place to place, never completely at home, always waiting in fear of what might come next, surviving only by the power of God to protect, save, deliver, and free.

With a savior like this, whose origins are on the other side of Christmas, in a world very different from our own, it seems to me that we should not get too comfortable on this side of Christmas. Jesus is already on that other side of Christmas, and his life and ministry and death and resurrection all invite us to join him in that world – our world, filled with refugees, homeless women and men, persecuted persons, and victims of every sort of violence and hatred – our world that so desperately needs the work he has already begun to bring comfort and peace and hope and salvation to all.

Our world needs more people to step in and stand with those who are in times and places and situations like Jesus’ – those we know in our lives who find new situations and difficult challenges before them in this new calendar year because of death, illness, or other uncertainty; those in our world who are displaced from their homes or are forced to walk away from their families and friends for their own safety, like refugees in Palestine or Darfur; those whose lives have been torn apart by war, like women, men, and children in Rwanda, North and South Korea, Afghanistan, and Iraq; and even those in our own city and nation who are forced to move from place to place to find work or a safe place to live.

One week from today, the people of southern Sudan will vote on their independence after decades of violence and war have torn their lives apart. Over the coming week, as a step into that other side of Christmas, I urge you to keep the people of Sudan in your prayers, and there are a few suggestions for prayers available on handouts in the auditorium at refreshments today. While there may seem to be little we can do to make a difference in these and other similar situations, the life of none less than Jesus himself demands that we speak up about injustice, call out for life and peace in the midst of death and destruction, pray for a new way to take hold and shape in our world, and step in where we can in whatever way that we can to work for a world where violence is not the final word and God can step in to make all things new.

And so my friends, this is the other side of Christmas – a place where we join God in stepping in to a broken and fearful world as God has already done with boldness in Jesus Christ and pray and work and pray some more for all things to be made new on both sides of Christmas. Lord, come quickly! Amen.

A New Perspective for Christmas

December 19, 2010 By Andy James

a sermon for the Fourth Sunday of Advent on Matthew 1:18-25
preached at the First Presbyterian Church of Whitestone on December 19, 2010

The Christmas season is filled with wonderful traditions in our lives, and the life of our congregation is no exception. We’re right in the middle of the biggest span of Christmas events, as you probably know. Many of you joined in hanging the greens here in the sanctuary a week or so ago or in celebrating at our congregational Christmas Party this past Friday night, and we still have our annual caroling excursion tonight and the festive celebration of the coming of our Lord on Christmas Eve.

Each year, we approach this very familiar holiday in much the same way, with things changing mainly by necessity and only rarely by choice. In my family, we celebrated Christmas in much the same way every year up until seven or eight years ago. On Christmas Eve, we always gathered at my mom’s parents’ home, went to the early church service, came home to a festive and sumptuous dinner, then adjourned to the living room to sing carols, hear the Christmas story from Luke, and open most of the gifts before going to bed. Then on Christmas morning, we would get up and see what Santa had brought us in our stockings, topping off our celebrations at lunchtime with yet another overwhelming holiday meal that prepared us well for a long winter’s nap on Christmas afternoon!

But then, about seven or eight years ago, things changed in our Christmas celebrations. My grandfather died, and my grandmother moved from their home, first to a condominium and then to an assisted living facility. I moved to New York City and took up a job that carries responsibilities until late on Christmas Eve – and sometimes on Christmas Day, too, leading me to spend my first Christmas night as a pastor by myself in a hotel near the Cincinnati airport after missing my connection there! At the same time, others in the family started to develop their own practices and habits based on their own changing and shifting lives.

After a year or two of trying to hold onto all the old traditions, we quickly learned that we needed to see Christmas from a different perspective, to stop trying to fit the square peg of our Christmas traditions into the round hole of our lives that was emerging before us and to open ourselves to something new for Christmas, built less on the practices and traditions we had established for ourselves over the years and more on the concepts and principles that had shaped our practices in this way over the years. It’s not perfect, but slowly and surely, with each passing year, we are starting to see and celebrate Christmas from a different perspective.

This morning, our reading from Matthew offers us a different perspective on the Christmas story. Beginning with this Advent, we’ll spend much of this next liturgical year making our way through Matthew’s gospel as we do every third year, but Matthew’s take on the Christmas story that we heard this morning is quite different from what we are used to hearing. While the gospel of Luke goes on at length about angels visiting Mary and Mary offering an incredible song of of praise to God in response, Matthew makes Mary the secondary character in the story. Here, Joseph takes center stage, receiving his own visit from the angel of the Lord, facing his own challenge to receive a strange and uncertain word and respond with grace and hope.

Mary and Joseph had gotten engaged, but before they could get married, Mary became pregnant. Joseph, just trying to do the right thing for Mary, felt like he should just let her go, but then the angel appeared to him in a dream, instructing him to go ahead and take her as his wife, for she had not been sleeping around on him but was rather pregnant by the Holy Spirit and would bear a child to be named Jesus because he would save the people from their sins. Matthew interrupts the story to note that all this happened to fulfill the prophecy of Isaiah that we heard this morning, but he finally reports that Joseph did as the angel had told him: Joseph took Mary to be his wife and named the son born to her Jesus.

At the core so much of this story is the same as what we’re used to hearing from Luke – a young unmarried woman is found to be pregnant, her husband-to-be decides not to cast her off, and an angel appears to explain how all this works and encourage everyone not to be too alarmed by what is happening. Even so, Matthew’s telling offers us just enough of a different perspective on things that it reminds us how much we need a change sometimes. Putting Joseph rather than Mary at the center of things invites us to consider that there were a lot of people who had something to say about what was happening here – not just Mary and Joseph but surely also their parents, their relatives, their neighbors, even the spiritual guides of their community. Hearing a different angel voice speaking to Joseph reminds us that we can all hear different things from our one God. And Joseph and Mary’s strange and seemingly inappropriate pregnancy suggests that God can and does work outside the boundaries we establish in our world.

This story reminds us that especially in these days we need a different perspective on Christmas. Too often the story of Christmas we tell is so familiar that we forget its radical message and purpose and so miss the real meaning of Christmas for us and our world. My favorite clergy comedy, The Vicar of Dibley, put this tendency so well. As the female vicar prepared to celebrate her second Christmas in a small town, her quite ditzy assistant notes that she didn’t remember the first sermon Christmas sermon the vicar had preached the year before.

“Not that it’s your fault – you probably just chose a boring subject,” she said.

The vicar responded, “The birth of Jesus Christ, otherwise known as the greatest story ever told?”

“Well, yeah, the first time you hear it, but after that, it’s a bit predictable, isn’t it? Man and woman get to inn, inn full, woman has baby in manger, angels sing on high, blah blah blah.”

“You have forgotten to mention that that baby is in fact the son of God.”

“Oh yeah, I know, I mean, that’s a nice twist.”

“Nice twist?”

“Yeah, but they aren’t exactly a lot of laughs!” (“The Christmas Lunch Incident”)

I don’t think we necessarily need a lot of laughs to get a new perspective on the Christmas story, but we do need something to help us see this incredible event in a new way. This is about more than shepherds and angels, more than an unwed mother and an uncertain father, more than a baby in a manger – the Christmas story is about how God breaks into our world and does something new when and where we least expect it, shifting our perspective at every turn and inviting us not just to go through the motions of a well-worn season but to see how Christmas changes everything – how God shows power and salvation through a little child, how God works through a strange, unexpected, unmarried couple to shape and mold one who bears salvation into the world, even how God invites us today to stop forcing our square pegs into round holes and so be a part of the incredible new thing that is coming even now. Christmas reminds us that God has changed the way God relates to us in these days, shifting from enforcing laws to proclaiming good news, moving from a set of rules to a wide-ranging relationship, enabling a new vision built not upon grudges but on grace.

That’s why I believe Advent is so important, my friends. If this Christmas is worthy of our celebration, then it is worthy of our preparation, to make space for something incredible and new to take hold in the world. If we believe what we say happens on this coming Christmas Day, then things ought to be different on the other side of it – and this side too! – so that God in Jesus Christ is more than just another baby and another birthday for us. If Christmas really is the day when God breaks into the darkness of our world and of our lives, then it deserves not to be the culmination of all worldly holidays, uplifted in the public sphere and celebrated even by those who misunderstand and disbelieve its central claims, but rather should be a time to celebrate and live our call to see things from a new perspective, for this is the time when God began to see things so clearly through our own human eyes and began to bring new light into all the world.

As these Advent days draw to a close and we welcome the Christ child, may God bring us all a new perspective on these Christmas days and the days to come so that we might be strengthened to walk in this new light even on the darkest of days until God’s brightness comes again to illumine us all forever. Lord, come quickly! Amen.