Help Me Remember Who I Am

Help Me Remember Who I Am
A Christmas Eve Message by Dave Shull
Spirit of Peace United Church of Christ
Sammamish, Washington
December 24, 2011

I never expected that a 30-year-old tour guide in India would break me open to hear the Christmas stories in a new way. Especially when he was talking about a 3000-year-old story from the Hindu religion. But God is a God of endless surprises. Who has gifts to offer us all the time if we only look for them.

Five weeks ago, our tour guide Markose was showing us around a palace on the southwest corner of India. We stood in front of a tapestry from a Hindu story called The Ramayana. He explained the scene to us. Then he stepped out of his role as tour guide. And into the role of sage. He said, “All of us need a base for our lives. We can’t live good lives from scratch.” Then we went on with the tour.

Though my body moved on with him, my mind was held on to his words. “All of us need a base for our lives. We can’t live good lives from scratch.” Markose was telling us we need to build our lives on some source of wisdom. Whether that base is a faith, a philosophy, or a tradition, it has to be big enough and flexible enough to guide the way we live as we change and as the world we live in changes. Our base gives us our values. Our base helps us make wise decisions and gives us a vision of what we’re living for. Without a base, Markose said, we live from scratch. We make it up as we go along. We have no center or compass. Living like that, Markose said, can’t help us build a more loving world.

As he reflected on a 3000-year-old story from Hinduism, Marcose gave me a new way to hear the Christmas stories. Since coming back from India, I’ve been asking myself, What base do the Christmas stories give me? How do the Christmas stories guide the way I live?

Then this past week, another unexpected gift came my way that broke me open to hearing the familiar stories of this night in a new way. That gift is a folktale told by both Jews and Muslims tell. It’s called “Ahaz the Slave” (below is a paraphrase of this story as printed in Megan McKenna, Advent, Christmas, and Epiphany: Stories and Reflections on the Sunday Readings, Orbis Books, 1998, pp. 179-81).

Once upon a time there was a poor man named Ahaz. He believed in God. He was always covered with mud and was bent over from working in the mines. One day, an officer of the king arrived to find a new attendant for the king. Ten of the more fit slaves were singled out to be interviewed. They were lined up in a row. Each was given an exquisite glass and told to break it. All obeyed immediately. Then the king went to each in turn and asked, “Why did you break it?” The response was simple, “Because you told me to.” One after another, they responded in the same way.

Now, the poor man who believed in God, the man whose name was Ahaz, thought quickly, “I can’t answer the same thing. What can I say?” He was the last of the slaves to be questioned, and when the king got to him, he stammered, “Forgive me, please. I am sorry,” and bowed before the king. It was exactly what he was thinking and feeling, and that was what came out. The king looked at him, smiled, and chose him as his new attendant.

Ahaz remembered what he had learned – to say and do exactly what he thought and felt, the truth and nothing else, no matter what the consequences. And the king found that he grew quickly to trust this man from the mines, because there were so few people who ever told him the truth or what they truly were thinking. They always coated it or covered it in what they thought the king wanted to hear, or bent it to serve their own advantage. Because the king trusted him explicitly, over time he delegated more and more power and authority to Ahaz.

Now, when someone rises in power that quickly, others become envious, jealous, and bitter. Ahaz had many enemies and many more who distrusted him and wondered what he did to so enchant the king. Soon the king’s closest advisers were coming to him every day with the same warning: “King, don’t you realize that Ahaz is robbing you blind? Can’t you see it? Every day, he waits until everyone’s gone. Then he takes the key you trust him with, and goes into your huge inner safe. He stays there over an hour every day. Then he leaves like nothing’s going on. But that inner safe is where the jewels and the land deeds are. That’s where you keep the gifts other rulers have given you. You know Ahaz could stick any of those things in his huge sleeves and make off with them without anyone knowing. King, you’ve got to stop him.”

The king couldn’t believe his most trusted advisor was robbing from him. But finally he decided he needed to make sure. Secretly he had two holes drilled at eye level in the wall of the storeroom so that someone could watch what happened inside.

One evening, the king took up his position. Sure enough, Ahaz arrived alone, entered the storeroom, and then used the keys to get into the great safe. He came out with a carefully folded pile of clothes. They were rags, filthy, smelly, caked with mud and sweat. He placed them on a table along with a candle and a book and some incense. He solemnly took off his robes of state and put on the rags that he had worn the day that he had been removed from the mines and taken to the king’s palace so many years ago. Then he lit the candle and incense and began to pray aloud:

“Lord God, Master of the Universe, I stand before you as you have made me.
Do not let me forget who I am and that I belong to you alone.
Help me to remember that all I do is not for the king, but for you alone.
For it is you who have blessed me and given me all that I now enjoy.
It is for you who have entrusted me the power of this kingdom and the friendship of the king.
Do not let me forget who I am and that I am yours, O Holy One,
and that I live by your mercy and will.”

He prayed like this for over an hour. Then he took off the rags of the slave and carefully folded them up again and put them back into the safe. He dressed again in the robes that were the gift of the king and left the storeroom, locking it behind him.

The king met him in the hallway when he left. Ahaz bowed low to the king. The king grasped him by the shoulders and lifted him up, speaking to him, not as a friend, but as king. “Ahaz,” he began, “you never cease to surprise and amaze me, and you have done it again. All of my counselors have warned me that you are a common thief and that you have been stealing from me behind my back. But you have managed to do something for me that no one else ever has – you have made me remember who I am. I am a king here on earth, but even I, or especially I, must stand before the Holy One and give an account of what I have done and who I am. You have made me remember that I am always God’s servant and belong to God alone. Do not ever let me forget who I truly am.”

Our tour guide Markose reminded me each of us needs a base to build our lives on. The story of Ahaz the slave says it’s easy to forget who we are, so we need people to remind us who we are. Markose and Ahaz tell me whatever it is we base our lives on helps remind us who we are.

Tonight, as you listened to the stories of Jesus’ birth, I wonder if they offered you a base or foundation that reminds you who you are and what you’re living for?

Tonight, the wisdom of Markose and Ahaz leads me to respond to the story of Jesus’ birth asking myself the question, If I’m not willing to follow the Prince of Peace, then why am I here?

Tonight I hear these stories as a call to resist violence. A call to live a different way. This Prince of Peace is the Savior who wants to save this world from surrendering to hate and fear. The Savior who wants us to put our faith in something other than the god of violence.

After our country declared the end of the Iraq War ten days ago, West Point graduate and retired career army officer Andrew Bacevich wrote these words:

The disastrous legacy of the Iraq War extends beyond treasure squandered and lives lost or shattered. Central to [the] legacy [of this war] has been Washington's decisive…abandonment of any…self-restraint regarding the use of violence as an instrument of [diplomacy]. With all remaining...barriers to the use of force having now been set aside, war has become a normal condition, something that the great majority of Americans accept without complaint. War is US”
(Andrew Bacevich, “After Iraq, War Is US,” Global Public Square Blog, 20 December 11).

I don’t know about you. But this Christmas, I need a base the reminds me who I am. The stories of this night give me a base. They remind me I am a follower of the Prince of Peace. That is who I am.

Hail the heaven-born Prince of Peace! Hail the Sun of Righteousness.
Light and life to all he brings, risen with healing in his wings.
Mild he lays his glory by, born that we no more may die,
born to raise us from the earth, born to give us second birth.
Hark! the herald angels sing, “Glory to the newborn king.”
(Charles Wesley, “’Hark!’ The Herald Angels Sing”)

Merry Christmas. Amen.

The Word Became Flesh

The Word Became Flesh…So We Can Be Our Child-of-God Selves
(John 1.1-14)
A meditation by Dave Shull
Spirit of Peace United Church of Christ
Sammamish, Washington
The Fourth Sunday of Advent – December 18, 2011

Every year around this time, pastors dust off a Christian teaching with the grand name of the incarnation. The incarnation is the Christian idea that in this baby Jesus Christ, and the adult he grew into, God took on a body. The incarnation says Jesus Christ was both fully divine and fully human. More than anyone or anything else, Jesus shows us who God is and what God is like. And more than anyone else, Jesus shows us what human life can look like. That’s a Reader’s Digest take on the incarnation. Over the centuries, arguments about what the incarnation means and how it works have gotten quite nasty.

I’d be surprised if, during the prayer time today, any of you stood up and said, “I’d like to ask for prayers for me and my best friend. Our relationship is under a lot of stress because our passionate disagreement about the incarnation.” One of the reasons I’d be surprised is because I think pastors and theologians have done a good job turning the incarnation into an abstract, irrelevant fossil. A Christian writer has said, “The incarnation is one of the most powerful parts of my faith. But the church has turned it into something so disembodied and abstract that it floats above the human condition” (Parker Palmer).

No teaching that floats above the human condition can change lives. Or heal brokenness. Or bring joy to the world. A week before we celebrate again the birth of this baby whom the Christian church proclaims is fully God and fully human, I’d like to talk about the incarnation. Not because I want it to become a cause for tension among your family and friends. But because the incarnation lies at the heart of what Christmas means. And it has everything to do with changing lives, and healing brokenness, and bringing joy to the world.

The incarnation shouldn’t be an abstract idea because it started with Jesus. The idea that God would take human form as one who is fully human and fully divine wasn’t hatched by some priests who were bored one Sunday afternoon and had nothing better to do. The incarnation wasn’t created by pointy-headed pundits in some church tower. The idea of God taking human form didn’t come first.

Jesus came first. And it was the people whose lives Jesus changed, and the people Jesus healed, and the people whose worlds Jesus filled with such joy who came up with the idea of the incarnation (the concept of the incarnation as a “from below” theology comes from Stanley J. Grenz, Theology for the Community of God, Eerdmans Publishing Co, 1994, p. 310). Because in this person Jesus, they felt God fully present. In this person Jesus, they came to see the joy and fullness of being human.

Many of the people Jesus came across during his three years travelling through the Galilee were dying. Some were dying from illnesses. Most were dying a slower kind of death. They had a condition, or they had done something. And this had led their families and communities to throw them out. So many of the people who let Jesus into their lives were dying from being totally alone and totally cut off. Because in Jesus, day, being expelled from your community meant you had no identity and no source of support.

Others Jesus came across were stuck in blindness. They were blind to hope and joy and non-violence and second-chances. Jesus came as light that pierced the blindness.

What did Jesus do that led people to see him as Life and Light? Over and over again, Jesus restored isolated individuals to communities of loved ones (John Koenig, New Testament Hospitality, Fortress Press, 1985, p. 30). You know what it’s like to be expelled and excluded. And then to feel a community open their arms to you. And welcome you into belonging, into love, into being human again.

For three years, Jesus the Life-Light created ways for people to be restored to communities of life and light. For three years, Jesus the Life-Light called people to change their lives, healed their brokenness, and showed people they could be joy to the world.

Then everything came crashing down. Rome decided all this talk of changed lives and healing and joy and love of enemies was too dangerous. So in the year 30ad, Rome murdered this Life-Light. And Jesus’ followers scattered. They thought it was all over. They thought the only thing left for them was to go back to where they’d been before Jesus talked to them. Back to their slow dying. Back to blindly making their way through the world.

But then the impossible happened. Easter happened. God emptied the tomb of death. God emptied the tomb of Jesus’ body. And suddenly people who had walked beside Jesus before Rome murdered him felt him with them again. Jesus was alive. He was talking to them. He was walking beside them. And they told everyone of this miracle. This Jesus who had shown them what it was like to live like their Child-of-God selves was alive.

And then something even more outrageous happened. People who had never met Jesus while Jesus was a flesh-and-blood human began to feel him beside them. And hear him. People born long after his murder felt his arms around them. Felt his love. And heard his call to turn away from violence and love even those who hated and feared them. The Living, Risen Jesus began to drawn more and more people who were born long after Rome murdered him More and more people born long after Rome murdered him felt themselves drawn into the presence of the Life-Light.

These were the people who created the Gospel of John. People who’d never walked beside the flesh-and-blood Jesus. But people to whom this Living, Risen Jesus was so powerfully and personally present, they knew God was in him. They knew God was totally present in this Jesus. And they also knew there was no one who was more human.

So these early Christians had to try to figure out who this Jesus was. And all they could come up with was that he was both fully divine and fully human.

That’s how the idea of the incarnation came to be.

And that’s what the community that created the Gospel of John was celebrating when they sang this hymn of wonder and joy to the Life-Light who showed them another way.

The Word was first – the Word present to God, God present to the Word.
The Word was God, in readiness for God from day one.
Everything was created through him;
nothing—not one thing!—came into being without him.
What came into existence was Life, and the Life was Light to live by.
The Life-Light blazed out of the darkness; the darkness couldn’t put it out.
There once was a man, his name John, sent by God to point out the way to the Life-Light.
He came to show everyone where to look, who to believe in.
John was not himself the Light; he was there to show the way to the Light.
The Life-Light was the real thing: every person entering Life he brings into Light.
He was in the world, the world was there through him,
and yet the world didn’t even notice.
He came to his own people, but they didn’t want him.
But whoever did want him,
who believed he was who he claimed and would do what he said,
he made to be their true selves, their child-of-God selves.
These are the God-begotten,
not blood-begotten, not flesh-begotten, not sex-begotten.
The Word became flesh and blood, and moved into the neighborhood.
We saw the glory with our own eyes,
the one-of-a-kind glory, like Father, like Son,
generous inside and out, true from start to finish.
(John 1.1-14, The Message Re-Mix © 2003 Eugene Peterson)

This Word made flesh and blood who moved into the neighborhood, this Life-Light who calls each of us to be our Child-of-God selves, is the one we make room for again this Christmas.

Look at your life. Look at the communities you’re part of. Look at your world. Where do you need to change your life? And where can you help someone make the changes they long to make. Where do you need some brokenness to be healed? And where can you heal some brokenness? Where do you need joy? And where can you be joy to someone’s world?
O come ye, O come ye, to Bethlehem (from the carol “O Come, All Ye Faithful”, which we sang earlier in worship).
Amen.

The Messiah Luke Celebrates

The Messiah Luke Celebrates

The Messiah Luke Celebrates: The Good News Who Shows Us the Way to True Peace
(Luke 2.8-14)
A meditation by Dave Shull
Spirit of Peace United Church of Christ
Sammamish, Washington
The Second Sunday of Advent – December 4, 2011

I’m spending these first two weeks of Advent looking at how the gospels of Matthew and Luke talk about the birth of Jesus. I’m drawing on the work of two Jesus scholars (Marcus Borg and John Dominic Crossan, The First Christmas, HarperOne, 2007) who say that the way Matthew and Luke tell the story of Jesus’ parents and Jesus’ birth shows us who they believed Jesus was.

Last week, we looked at the gospel of Matthew. We saw that the Messiah Matthew celebrates is the new Moses, coming to give the people a new law. We also saw that Matthew believed Jesus was Emmanuel – the Hebrew word that means God-with-us.

Today we look at how Luke tells the story of Jesus’ birth. And what that shows us about who Jesus Christ is for Luke.

Every time I hear the story of the angels coming to the shepherds to announce Jesus’ birth, I think of “A Charlie Brown Christmas”. And the amazing way Linus tells this story. It’s so simple. And innocent. Like it seems it’s supposed to sound.

But in first-century Palestine, in the Roman Empire, the story Luke tells is anything but simple and innocent. Luke’s story is political dynamite. Because the titles Luke gives to this baby are titles that can only be used for the Roman Emperor. The Empire could charge anyone who tells this story with treason. “A Charlie Brown Christmas” would have a little different feel to it if, as soon as Linus finishes telling the story of Jesus’ birth, some toga-clad security forces had burst into the school and hauled him off.

Listen for a word from God.

There were sheepherders camping in the neighborhood.
They had set night watches over their sheep. Suddenly, God's angel stood among them and God's glory blazed around them. They were terrified.
The angel said, "Don't be afraid. I'm here to announce a great and joyful event that is meant for everybody, worldwide: A Savior has just been born in David's town, a Savior who is Messiah and Master. This is what you're to look for: a baby wrapped in a blanket and lying in a manger."
At once the angel was joined by a huge angelic choir singing God's praises:
“Glory to God in the heavenly heights,
Peace to all men and women on earth who please him.”
(Luke 2.8-14, The Message Re-Mix © 2003 Eugene Peterson)

Luke couldn’t have chosen to write a story that was more in your face toward the Roman Empire. The Roman Emperor was the only one in the Empire who could be called Lord, Son of God, Bringer of Peace, and Savior of the World. But these are the same titles Luke uses in the story he writes about Jesus’ birth. And the same titles he uses in his gospel (Borg and Crossan, p. 57). So it’s clear Luke is telling the Emperor he’s got competition.

And it’s clear Luke is confronting those who are listening to his story with a stark choice. Which Lord, which Son of God, which Bringer of Peace, which Savior of the World are you going to follow? The throne isn’t big enough to hold both the Emperor and Jesus. So, Luke asks, for you, which is it going to be?

The stark contrast between the ways of the Empire and the ways of Jesus emerge most clearly when we look at one of the words in Luke’s story: peace. Of all the words in the story Michele just read, this might be the hardest for Jesus’ followers. I think this Advent it’s the hardest for me.

Empires and Jesus have very different ideas of how to bring peace. Empires and Jesus might both want peace. But how they get there is totally different. And that difference makes all the difference. Because we’re talking about ends and means. And what means we use to bring about an end we desire.

Like all empires, the Roman Empire had a clear sense of what peace was and how to bring it about. Peace came through the smart use of religion, war, and victory. When you can make religion, war, and victory work in your favor, you get peace (Borg and Crossan, p. 65).

It worked something like this: You ask the gods to bless you and your war effort, so you can try to convince yourselves and everyone else the gods are on your side. When you win, you get to define the terms for peace. You thank the gods again. Then when you decide you need to fight another war, the process starts all over again. For the Empire, “it was always about peace through victory, peace through war, peace through violence” (Borg and Crossan, p. 65). Nice and simple.

Then Jesus came along. A different kind of Bringer of Peace. He said the only way to create true peace is by doing what is just. He said the only way to true peace is through nonviolence (Borg and Crossan, p. 69). Peace through loving your enemy. Peace through doing to others what you would wish they did to you. Peace through forgiveness and mercy and making sure everyone has enough. That is how Jesus acts in Luke’s gospel. That is the Jesus the angel proclaims.

So the people who heard Luke’s angel proclaim this news of Jesus’ birth had to make a decision: which Savior will I follow? Whose vision of peace do I want to live for? And give my life for? For the people who heard Luke’s Christmas story at the end of the first century, it was a life and death decision. If they decided to follow the Savior Jesus, the Empire might kill them.

This Advent, we hear the angel’s words. And they call us to answer the same question. Which Savior will we follow? For we live in the 21^st-cenutry American Empire. In an Empire at war in Afghanistan. An Empire that’s fighting an open-ended, anything goes war on whatever the Empire defines as “terror”. So I hear the angel’s words. And I don’t know which Bringer of Peace I trust. I want to live the life Jesus lived … even if it takes me to dangerous places. I want to trust God like the Mahatma Gandhis and Martin Luther Kings I respect so much trusted God. People like this lived nonviolence. Not the nonviolence that gets equated with just letting your enemy do whatever they want to you. But the disciplined, practiced nonviolence that develops imaginative, shrewd ways to surprise our enemy with our creative resistance and our unyielding love. A big part of me knows violence can never bring true, lasting peace. Even if it seems to bring peace for a while.

And then I look at the world. And I know I could never tell someone they shouldn’t do whatever they feel like they need to to protect those they love. I look at people who seem to love to terrify others. Those who seem to have no conscience. And I wonder if nonviolence can ever help heal these people who, no matter what they do, are my sisters and brothers because they are children of God.

When it comes down to it, where to I put my trust? In this Risen, Living Jesus who says nonviolence is the only sure way to peace? Or do I trust the Empire … the Empire that has the guns and the drones and the money and the other trappings of power that our world recognizes and respects?

Where do I put my trust this Advent? Which Savior, which Bringer of Peace do you trust? What tensions, if any, do you feel around that?

I don’t think I’ll ever hear Linus read Luke’s words in the same way again.