How many among us grew up with a nativity scene in our homes during the Christmas holidays? How many of us have one right now? If you did, or do, close your eyes and imagine that nativity scene. Who is there? The Baby Jesus, of course, at the center, in his manger. His mother Mary and the faithful Joseph. A shepherd or two, surely. The random sheep, and donkey, and camel. And then—there they are—three men, dressed in ornate robes, each holding a container of something precious, if not immediately recognizable as an appropriate gift for a newborn. If we concentrate hard, or, if we by chance saw the recent Tri-Cities Opera production of “Amahl and the Night Visitors,” we may even be able to conjure their names: Caspar, Balthazar, and Melchior. The camel is there because of them, they traveled such a distance from the east. In a carol, moments ago, we called them the three kings of the Orient, but they’ve also been known as the wise men, or even, straight out of the original language of the passage, the magi.

Their story takes up only 12 short verses of scripture, but the magi have captured the imaginations of Christians for nearly two millennia. And yet, we know less about the magi than we think…

"The Golden Pilgrimage" by Carmelle Beaugelin"
Copyright A Sanctified Art, used by Permission

I love Christmas lights.

I really love the lights in my neighborhood. I live on the West Side of Binghamton, and while none of the displays I drive past every year is likely to show up in the news—nothing wild, no one trying to break any records or compete with anyone else—still, each year, they are new, fresh, a little different. And each year, as I’m driving home in the late November early darkness and I see a new installation, my heart lifts, it thrills, really, and I feel incredibly grateful for this gift my neighbors share with one another. Christmas lights are a gift to the community…

What is it about light?…

“Ponder” by Hannah Garrity
Copyright A Sanctified Art. Used by permission

Every Christmas Eve, we gather together

in this same beautiful sanctuary,

to tell the same story,

the story of a couple traveling so that some ruler can be sure to get their hands on everyone’s taxes.

The story of a baby born, and then laid in a manger, a feedbox for animals.

The story of a sky exploding with light and song and angels.

The story of the first witnesses—the shepherds, the ones to whom the angels entrusted this incredible good news.

It’s the shepherds who have my attention this year…

Image: “How God Shows Up” by Rev. Lisle Gwynn Garrity
Copyright A Sanctified Art. Used by permission.

…This morning we hear a story about two women coming together at a key moment in both of their lives: Elizabeth, who will bear the prophet, the Christ-proclaimer John the Baptist, and Mary, who will bear the Christ, the Messiah, himself.

Every commentary I’ve read on this passage takes note of how amazing this is—the presence of such a story: A story of two women in scripture, whose coming together is not only noted, but whose actual words are reported. This is rare because women are rare in the bible. Out of 3,237 individuals in scripture who are named, only 205 of them are women—that’s something like 6 percent.

This is also one of the few biblical passages that passes the Bechdel test. For those of you who are not familiar with this test, it’s an assessment of movies. “[It] is a simple test which names the following three criteria: (1) [the movie] has to have at least two women in it, who (2) who talk to each other, about (3) something besides a man.”[i]

Now, Elizabeth and Mary come together because each of them is pregnant with a child who will be an extraordinary man, that is true. But if you examine their conversation, it is entirely about God….

“Dance of the Soul” by Hannah Garrity
Copyright A Sanctified Art; used by permission

This is not where I thought I would be. I don’t mean the road from Nazareth to Bethlehem—of course I knew I would be traveling to fulfill the obligations of the census. No, I mean I never dreamed this path I would be traveling… I, Joseph, son of the law, the righteous man, the just man. I never imagined the path I would be on just now with my wife. That I would find myself taking on marriage, a child not my own, a future I can’t even imagine. Mary is resting now. It has been a grueling day of walking and riding, even more so for a woman as advanced in pregnancy as she is. She looks so young while she’s sleeping—just like a child, a young girl not yet married. But she is not a child. In a week or two, she will be a mother. And here we are, on this road neither of us ever dreamed we’d travel…

Image: “The Courageous Choice” by Rev. Lisle Gwinn Garrity.
Copyright A Sanctified Art. Used by permission.

For the last couple of years there’s been a kind of mini-trend I’ve noticed among Christian religious types to search for Christmas angel ornaments that are “Biblically correct” or “Biblically accurate.” By which they mean, from various accounts found in scripture: they have six wings, two covering their eyes, two covering their feet, and two for flying. And/ or their wings are covered with eyes, so that no matter what direction they are moving in, they can see clearly. And/ or they take on the shapes of wheels. And/ or they have various heads resembling those of various creatures. (Google “Biblically Accurate Furby” to see the result of some of these inquiries.)

All of which amounts to this: There is a reason why, when angels present themselves to humans in scripture, at some point in the encounter they must say some version of “Be not afraid”…

Image: “Mary’s Golden Annunciation” by Carmen Beaugelin. Copyright A Sanctified Art. Used by permission.

…Here’s the thing about genealogies: They’re full of stories. I did an experiment with the Bible Study folks this week, in which I read this passage aloud and asked everyone to raise their hands when they heard a name whose story was familiar to them. There were several sections in which every hand was raised, and there were others in which every hand—mine included was down. I’ve read the Bible cover to cover, and I’ve studied it at two fine institutions of learning, but I can’t tell you a single thing about Aminadab—except the name rings a bell.

But the writer of this account of the generations is counting on us all to know about, or at least take note of certain names. In fact, those names are the ones that tell us the most about the person whose name comes at the end, that tell us the most about what we, the curious readers and listeners, can expect from Jesus.

I think there are at least three stories this genealogy wants us to know. The first story is this: Jesus is a son of Abraham…

Image: The Genealogy of Christ” by the Rev. Lauren Wright Pittman, Copyright A Sanctified Art, used by permission.

Some of my earliest memories of church are about the music. When I was a child we had a lot of guitar music in church, so as soon as I learned how to play guitar, I figured out how to sing some of those songs and accompany myself singing. One of my favorites was “Hear, O Lord, the sound of my call…” It was a gentle, melancholy sort of song, one I think I related to. It was about loneliness, but it was also about God’s love being present for us in that loneliness. I didn’t know it at the time, but it was based on a psalm. And so, through the words and music of that hymn, I began to learn about God. I began to learn a little scripture. The music we hear in church is important. Whether we start coming as little children or find our way here in adulthood, the music and lyrics we sing in church serves as a foundation for what we believe…

Image: Elizabeth and Zechariah, stained glass, from Cathédrale de Sainte-Etienne de Bourge, France, from Art in the Christian Tradition, a project of the Vanderbilt Divinity Library, Nashville, TN. https://diglib.library.vanderbilt.edu/act-imagelink.pl?RC=54189 [retrieved September 24, 2022]. Original source: http://www.flickr.com/photos/pelegrino/1356007875/.

I’ll start today with a little bit of UPC history for you. Union Presbyterian Church has had a total of four churches, four different church buildings. Founded in the year 1819, when our original name was the First Presbyterian Society in the Town of Union, our ancestors in faith first worshiped together in a small log church in the middle of what is now our Riverside Cemetery. Just three years later, a new structure was built on that same site, larger and grander, our Colonial Church. It served the congregation well for nearly five decades, when it was decided to the building move to Main Street, because that was where the action was. A new church—the Victorian Church—was built onto the Colonial church, at this site and dedicated in 1872. It grew and flourished for more than thirty years, until its steeple was struck by lightning on May 17, 1906, at 7:30 in the evening. The Victorian Church burned to the ground. A committee to rebuild was quickly formed, ground was broken in July, and the new church—this church—was dedicated on March 16, 1907, just ten months after the fire.

I wonder. What would the members who worshiped in that Victorian building have thought if a local street preacher had told them in 1905 that their beautiful church would burn to the ground, and soon? What a shocking thing to say. What an awful prediction to make about their future—even if it was true.

Image: Destruction of the Temple in Jerusalem by Francesco Hayez. Oil on canvas, 1867. Public Domain.

We have two very different scripture passages this morning. Most Sundays we have one passage that informs most of the content of the meditation or sermon, and it is usually paired with a psalm that holds some of the same key ideas as the sermon passage. Today, it’s very different. These two passages seem incredibly far apart in theme and content. Despite that fact, it’s actually as if the two passages are two views of one thing, two sides of the same coin: the saints of God, what we call the communion of saints…

Image: Hochhalter, Cara B.. Blessed are Those, from Art in the Christian Tradition, a project of the Vanderbilt Divinity Library, Nashville, TN. https://diglib.library.vanderbilt.edu/act-imagelink.pl?RC=59299 [retrieved September 24, 2022]. Original source: Cara B. Hochhalter.

…Here’s the scene. Jesus is entering Jericho, a city that shows up several times in the gospels. In one parable, it’s a destination never reached by a man who is beaten and robbed. In one story, it’s a place where Jesus heals blind beggars. It’s a city with a history—something about walls tumbling down, and a woman of the night who happens to be an ancestor of Jesus. A lot of things happen in and around Jericho…

Image: Hole, William, 1846-1917. Christ Speaks to Zacchaeus, from Art in the Christian Tradition, a project of the Vanderbilt Divinity Library, Nashville, TN. https://diglib.library.vanderbilt.edu/act-imagelink.pl?RC=57184 [retrieved September 24, 2022]. Original source: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Hole_zachaeus_in_tree.gif.

…Parables can be so frustrating. Personally, I want all the characters in a parable to be easily identified…this one is Jesus, this one is God, and so forth. So, really, I want an allegory, not a parable. Much simpler. Parables, on the other hand, are slippery. It’s not necessarily easy to understand the point Jesus is making. It’s not always easy to identify who is who. Case in point: The parable of the widow and the unjust judge. On the surface, here’s what we have: a woman, a widow—is she a stand-in for us?—and she is among the three classic categories of people whom the law of scripture tells us to care for: widows, orphans, and foreigners. The most vulnerable in ancient society, and therefore, the ones to whom everyone had a responsibility to treat them with compassion, and to help them find justice. For someone so vulnerable, though, she’s a powerhouse. An unrelenting powerhouse, who is pressing a judge for justice. (Most likely it’s a property dispute.) And as the parable shows us, she really gets to the judge.

And the judge—the character who, maybe, represents God? He’s a caricature of a bad judge. He says so himself. “Though I have no fear of God and no respect for anyone, yet because this widow keeps bothering me, I will grant her justice, so that she may not wear me out by continually coming.” That’s a cleaned-up version of the Greek; it actually says, so that she may not come and slap me in the face.

So, the person we expect to be vulnerable is the powerhouse, it turns out, when it comes to justice. And the one who doesn’t give a fig about justice applies it anyway, to avoid the risk of being publicly slapped by this woman…

Image: “Parable of the Unjust Judge” by Nikola Sarić (http://www.nikolasaric.de)

There’s being sick, and then there’s being a leper. The newly updated version of the bible we use here at UPC has dropped that word, leper, entirely, except for two instances when it is used to identify a specific individual (Simon the leper). I think that’s because of what the word connotes, more than its technical definition. To be a leper is to be an outcast. To be a leper is to be avoided. To be a leper is to be feared, and ostracized, and seen as a hopeless case.

There’s being sick, and then there’s being the hopeless case nobody wants to be near, unable to be with family, unable to hold a job, those people for whom even the lowest rung of the social ladder is out of reach. People without a home.

Ten men with this problem—a skin disease that cast them into that category of outcast—these men approach Jesus for healing.

Image: Christ and the Lepers from the Codex Aureus Epternacensis; 1035-1040, from Art in the Christian Tradition, a project of the Vanderbilt Divinity Library, Nashville, TN. https://diglib.library.vanderbilt.edu/act-imagelink.pl?RC=56011 [retrieved September 24, 2022]. Original source: http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:CodexAureus_Cleansing_of_the_ten_lepers.jpg.

Imagine you were going through a difficult moment—something that made you feel afraid, maybe even unmoored. And imagine that you could talk to anyone you’d ever known in your life, living or dead. Whose counsel would seek? Who would you want to talk to?

We have before us today one of the New Testament letters traditionally attributed to the Apostle Paul. But this letter is different than most of Paul’s other letters. It’s written to one person, Timothy, not to a congregation. It’s written to someone in distress, someone who is feeling unmoored. There’s theology in it, to be sure. But what stands out are the words of gratitude for Timothy’s life and faith and gifts. What stands out here are words of encouragement, and stern words, too, urging Timothy to stay the course…

Image: “Lois and Eunice,” Stained glass. St. Mary’s Kemptown, UK. Window by James Powell & Sons, 1897. Used with permission.

…The next part, the conversations between the rich man and Abraham, is the highlight of the story. Even though they are in different realms, the rich man can see where Lazarus is with Abraham, and he calls for help. He asks that Lazarus be sent to dip his finger in water and drop it on his tongue. He asks Abraham to send Lazarus to make him feel better. Needless to say, Abraham refuses. He refuses while offering the kind of explanation you offer to a child in time out. “Now remember, what you did was very wrong, and no, I’m not going to send Larry to keep you company, since he was the one you hit. Yes, he gets to stay in the cafeteria and eat a cookie. No, you don’t get that. Remember the rules? You are in time-out.”

Abraham says something chilling, though. “Besides all this, between you and us a great chasm has been fixed.” You can’t get there from here, Abraham says. Even if I wanted to send Lazarus, and even if he wanted to go. It’s simply not possible…

Image: Tissot, James, 1836-1902. Bad Rich Man in Hell, from Art in the Christian Tradition, a project of the Vanderbilt Divinity Library, Nashville, TN. https://diglib.library.vanderbilt.edu/act-imagelink.pl?RC=58080 [retrieved September 24, 2022]. Original source: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Brooklyn_Museum_-_The_Bad_Rich_Man_in_Hell_(Le_mauvais_riche_dans_l'Enfer)_-_James_Tissot_-_overall.jpg.

“Who is my neighbor?” That is the question at the heart of this parable. And, in truth, it’s the question at the heart of a lot of decisions we are called upon to make in our day-to-day lives. Where will our money go? What do we think is a good or poor use of our tax money? How shall we respond to strangers in duress, whether we see them lying on the pavement on our way to work, or they come and ring the doorbell of the church?

Image: Modersohn-Becker, Paula, 1876-1907. Good Samaritan, from Art in the Christian Tradition, a project of the Vanderbilt Divinity Library, Nashville, TN. https://diglib.library.vanderbilt.edu/act-imagelink.pl?RC=54709 [retrieved September 17, 2022]. Original source: https://lh6.googleusercontent.com/-WxCMfinpdgc/R-BPkeswPmI/AAAAAAAAHg0/gHWyfWO12EQ/s512/The%252520merciful%252520Samaritan%252520by%252520%252520Paula%252520Modersohn-Becker.jpg. Used with permission.

… We are immersed in two of Luke’s “lost and found” parables this morning, the well-known story of the lost sheep and the not-so-well-known one of the lost coin. The context of these stories is important: Jesus has come under fire for associating with the wrong sorts of people—he’s been seen eating with tax collectors and sinners, and tax collectors were even more reviled in those days than they are now, in some quarters. They were seen as terrible traitors because they cooperated with the Romans. So, Jesus is dining with people who the other religious leaders wouldn’t go near. Jesus responds with these stories…

Image: Cranach, Lucas, 1515-1586. Christ as the good shepherd, from Art in the Christian Tradition, a project of the Vanderbilt Divinity Library, Nashville, TN. https://diglib.library.vanderbilt.edu/act-imagelink.pl?RC=57054 [retrieved August 12, 2022]. Original source: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Lucas_Cranach_d.J._-_Christus_als_guter_Hirte_(Angermuseum).jpg.

… I wonder what the prayer life of John’s disciples was like. I have now been forced to imagine it! John’s whole vibe was Elijah updated, right? The gospels of Matthew and Mark both tell us that John wore clothing made of camel’s hair with a leather belt—camels being considered unclean and coming from another part of the world than Rome-occupied Palestine. As for John’s diet, he ate locusts and wild honey, both of which are acceptable kosher foods. But it has to be said: John’s way of life is austere, basic.

What does that mean about the way his disciples prayed? Did they pray for hours on end? Did they pray on their knees? On pebbles?

We do not know the answer to this, but Jesus’ disciples did. They don’t seem interested in following John’s other lifestyle choices, but they wish their rabbi would teach them a thing or two about prayer. So he does.

It’s incredibly simple. It’s incredibly hard.

So here they are: the top ten things Jesus teaches his friends and followers about prayer…

Image: Jesus Praying, from Art in the Christian Tradition, a project of the Vanderbilt Divinity Library, Nashville, TN. https://diglib.library.vanderbilt.edu/act-imagelink.pl?RC=56704 [retrieved August 12, 2022]. Original source: https://www.flickr.com/photos/talesoftaromeet/6867087845 - DL Duncan, Louisville, KY.

Ah, the royals. The parties they throw. The revenge they get. “Gold teeth, Grey Goose, trippin' in the bathroom/ Bloodstains, ball gowns, trashin' the hotel room…”[i] They don’t care. We leave the byways of Galilee with Jesus and his disciples and find ourselves at the birthday party of none other than King Herod Antipas. There is a dance. There is a promise. And there are gruesome consequences…

When it comes to scripture, oftentimes, context is everything.

The shocking story we’ve just heard doesn’t exist in a vacuum. Something happened before, and something happens after. To understand the story, and its significance, it helps to look at the context.

Image: Solario, Andrea, approximately 1465-approximately 1520. Salome with the Head of John the Baptist, from Art in the Christian Tradition, a project of the Vanderbilt Divinity Library, Nashville, TN. https://diglib.library.vanderbilt.edu/act-imagelink.pl?RC=54128 [retrieved June 9, 2022]. Original source: http://www.flickr.com/photos/17884832@N00/1163690185/.

…So the elders of the people go to Samuel, and they insist: “You are old, and your sons do not follow in your ways; appoint for us, then, a king to govern us…” Actually, that word govern is, literally, “judge.” The people want justice. And, then they add, “like other nations.”

There’s the rub: “Like other nations.” God’s covenant people are not like other nations. They are bound together by the laws God has given them, summarized in “You shall love the Lord you God with all your heart and soul, mind and strength,” and “You shall love your neighbor as yourself.” They live in community with an unseen and yet sovereign God as their king. This is challenging. And if the humans who are supposed to provide justice are failing, all the more reason to press for something that seems to be working elsewhere: hierarchical human leadership. A scholar I consulted this week reminds us, “The lure of conformity is seductive, and the pressures towards cultural accommodation are great.” Then, as now. Even in the year 1100 BCE, which is more or less when we think Saul was on the throne. The problem as Samuel sees it, is that the people have rejected him. The problem as God sees it, is, the demand for an earthly king is a rejection of God. It is also the first step towards idolatry, putting a person or thing before God. It’s a dangerous move…

Image: Bloemaert, Abraham, 1564-1651. King Saul, from Art in the Christian Tradition, a project of the Vanderbilt Divinity Library, Nashville, TN. https://diglib.library.vanderbilt.edu/act-imagelink.pl?RC=57940 [retrieved June 8, 2022]. Original source: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:King_Saul_MET_DP802069.jpg.