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The Christmas Story is Our Story: Marriage and Mission

12/18/2022

 

Rev. Dr. John Judson
December 18, 2022
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Isaiah 61:6-11; Matthew 1:18-24   

    The last couple of weeks have demonstrated to me once again just how complicated, contextual, and cultural the institution of marriage is. There were two things that happened recently that made this clear. The first is that here in the United States there was a bipartisan bill to protect same-sex and interracial marriage that was signed into law by President Biden. This law was passed because both of those types of marriage were dependent not on formal laws but on Supreme Court decisions that could be reversed.  This law was not only passed by congress but was supported by a vast majority of Americans.  The second thing that happened occurred in Indonesia where their government instituted a new constitution. This constitution included provisions that made adultery and sex outside of marriage, crimes punishable by imprisonment.  These laws not only apply to citizens but to tourists, so if you are going to visit Bali, take a copy of your marriage license with you. What is interesting about this section of the new constitution is that it is not only opposed by all Western governments but by many in Indonesia, especially many of the indigenous peoples.  It is opposed by them because many of the indigenous peoples do not have formal wedding ceremonies or certificates as part of their culture. They have instead a wide variety of marriage customs which would not be recognized by this new law.  What this debate demonstrates is just how culturally conditioned and different marriage can be.

      We can see how culture defines marriage in the scriptures. In the earliest Biblical accounts, there is no mention of a marriage ceremony, only someone became someone’s husband or wife. Later there was polygamy with Abraham having more than one wife and Solomon having some seven-hundred wives.  The Apostle Paul proclaims that people would be better off not being married.  All of which brings us to our morning’s story about Joseph and Mary. To understand the sense of the story we need to understand marriage in first century Judea among the Jewish population. Marriage was a three-step process. Step one occurred when children were young. The parents of the boy and the parents of the girl would engage them.  And please remember that all marriages were arranged marriages.  This is where Joseph and Mary are at the beginning of our story. Step two is the betrothal. The betrothal was a formalized marriage contract between the parties involved in the marriage. In a sense this was a pre-nup.  Yes, long before this moment in time there were pre-nups. We know this because scholars have found them from Jewish communities in the time of Jesus. The final step was the consummation. This would occur after the wedding feast that could last up to a week.  What we watch happen in this story is Mary and Joseph move through the three stages. They are engaged. Then Joseph takes Mary for his wife, this is the betrothal stage, and then we are reminded that the consummation of the marriage takes place after Jesus is born.  

      You may be wondering why I am spending so much time telling you about marriage customs in the first century. The reason is that I believe that Matthew deliberately takes his readers through this process because it is an allegory for God’s relationship with humanity in general and God’s people in particular. What I mean by this is that one of the most common scriptural allusions to God’s relationship with humanity and with the Hebrew people is that of husband and wife. Israel is referred to as the one who is betrothed to or married to the creator.  When the people of God wander far from God they are described as a wife who has gone after other lovers. The entire book of Hosea is based on this concept with Hosea acting out the part of God who goes seeking his wayward spouse.  Later in the New Testament we read references to the church being the bride of Christ. And so, what I want to do over the next few minutes is allow this three-part marriage to teach us about God’s amazing work with the world.

      Let’s begin in the beginning when God created the heavens and the earth.  This was the moment of engagement. This was the moment God created something outside of God’s self that God declared to be good, as God gave it life and purpose.  We can see God’s engagement with the creation in that God created human beings to be the caretakers of creation so that creation could fulfill its purpose of being a living, breathing, reality whose presence gave glory to God. This engagement lasts through the first eleven chapters of the book of Genesis.  In those chapters we watch as humanity attempts to pull away from the one to whom it was engaged.  This desire to pull away does not lead to God calling off the engagement. Instead, God proceeds to the betrothal, a betrothal God makes with Abraham.

      It is at the betrothal stage that this marriage allegory links arms with the Christmas story, for it is with the betrothal that Matthew began his genealogy.  Remember that Matthew begins his genealogy with Abraham, and it is with Abraham that God makes the betrothal. We generally don’t call it that. Instead, we call it a covenant.  God and Abraham make a covenant in which Abraham agreed to worship God alone and to go where God called him to go. God promised to watch over Abraham, give him the gifts of land, offspring, and blessing and, through Abraham and Sarah, bless all of creation. This covenant is almost identical to first century marriage contracts, or covenants.  There are things that each party promises to do and not to do.

      The final part of the marriage is the consummation. We read of that consummation in verse 18. “Now the birth of Jesus the Messiah took place in this way. When his mother Mary had been engaged to Joseph, but before they lived together, she was found to be pregnant from the Holy Spirit.” The consummation of this relationship is somehow mysteriously and powerfully the coming together of God and humanity through the Spirit to bring Jesus into this world.  I know that many people have spilled much ink over this passage as they debate the virgin birth. Was it real? What are the physics of it? But in the first century no one would have found this idea out of the ordinary. After all, if God can create the universe, God can bring forth a child to a virgin. The real miracle of the story, I would argue, is not the virgin birth, but what Jesus had come to do, save God’s people from their sins. Notice that it doesn’t say Jesus came to forgive sins, which he does by the way, but that he came to save God’s people from their sins. And what sins are these? To find them all we need do is return to the genealogy and we find them. God’s people wandered far from God by worshipping other gods, by murder, by violence, by child sacrifice, by adultery, by jealousy, by greed, and in a host of other ways. 

      What these sins tell us is that the people of God, who were supposed to bless all nations through loving God, neighbor and caring for creation, had lost their way. They had wandered far off the path that God has set for them to fulfill their end of the marriage contract. They had taken peace from the world and brought violence instead. The miracle is that in this child, born in Bethlehem, God has come to bring the people back to the path; to bring humanity back to the path of loving God and neighbor, because when humanity returns to the path God has set, then peace breaks out. This is what Isaiah tells us, that when we are back on the path, righteousness breaks out. Righteousness, meaning living in right relationship with God, neighbor, and creation, will break out, will flourish, will grow like a beautiful garden. And righteousness is what leads to peace. And that is the miracle of this passage because if you are like me, you believe that it will take a miracle to bring peace to the world. If that is so, here it is. In Jesus Christ, peace is possible.
​

      My challenge to all of us for this week is not to believe in the virgin birth. My challenge is to ask ourselves, if we are on the right path, how are we building peace in the world? How am I being a follower of the Prince of Peace, and making peace a reality in the world around me?

The Christmas Story is Our Story: Return and Renewal

12/11/2022

 
Rev. Dr. John Judson
December 11, 2022

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2 Kings 25:8-12; Matthew 1:12-17


      It was all my Peace Corps roommate could talk about. It was Bird Island this and Bird Island that.  Finally, I gave in and agreed to go with him to visit Bird Island, a small uninhabited island off the larger island of Palawan in the southern Philippines. He said he had it all arranged. First, we would travel by ship to Palawan, then hire a “guide” to take us to Bird Island. It sounded like a great plan until we got to the ship that would take us to Palawan.  The ship it turns out was a cargo ship that had some room for passengers and all the passenger spaces were sold out so we slept on the deck. After several very warm days we arrived in Palawan. Our “guide” to the island was the one fisherman we could hire to take us who knew where the island was.  We paid him half the fare to get us there and promised him the other half when he picked us up three days later.  We traveled out aboard his outrigger canoe and watched as the waves became larger and stronger.  As we finally approached Bird Island, we noticed that the horizon was growing ever darker with clouds.  Our “guide” dropped us off and immediately turned and ran.  We came ashore with our food, sleeping mats and no tent. We walked around the island then settled in before the typhoon hit us. For the next 48 hours the rain and wind whipped us and the island. Fortunately, on the third day the storm broke. But it was then that it dawned on us that we had no way to communicate with anyone, anywhere, and what would happen if our “guide” decided not to return?  Thoughts of Gilligan’s Island danced in our heads.  It occurred to us that we could be castaways without food, water, or hope.

      I wonder this morning how many of you have ever found yourselves feeling like a castaway? By that I don’t mean stuck on an island some place, but simply that you feel as if you are living in a new and strange place; a place where nothing seems to make sense anymore; a place where the language is filled with all sorts of terms and phrases you don’t understand; a place where the ground under your feet seems to be constantly shifting; a place where you no longer feel comfortable and at home?  If you have ever found yourself in such a place, then you can understand how the people listed in our morning’s story felt. If you have ever felt this way, then the Christmas story is your story because all the names we read a few moments ago felt like castaways and they wondered if they would ever make it home.  Let me explain.

      We begin with Jechoniah because he is the person who links the story from 2 Kings with our genealogy in Matthew. Jechoniah was the next to last king of Judah.  After resisting the Babylonians, he, along with many of the Judeans, was taken captive and deported to Babylon.  His brother Zedekiah, who was 21 at the time, was tasked with ruling by Judah’s Babylonian overlords. It was only a few years later that Zedekiah chose to rebel against Babylon. This time the Babylonians were not nice.  As we read, they destroyed Jerusalem, burned the Temple to the ground, killed Zedekiah’s sons, then blinded Zedekiah and took him away in chains to Babylon.  Along with Zedekiah most of the population of Judah was taken into exile as well. In Babylon the people found themselves as castaways. It was a strange land with a strange language, strange gods, and strange customs.  Like my friends and I, they wondered if anyone would ever come and take them home.  

      It is that sense of being castaways that permeates Matthew’s genealogy. As I mentioned, the genealogy begins with Jechoniah who, with most of Judea, is taken into exile in Babylon. It continues with his son Salathiel who grew up and stayed in Babylon.  It continues with Jeconiah’s grandson Zerubbabel, who was able to lead some of God’s people back to Judah. He was able to do so because God sent a messiah who would allow them to return. That messiah was Cyrus the Great of Persia who defeated the Babylonians. Unfortunately, Zerubbabel who is seen by several prophets as a second Messiah, is unsuccessful in restoring Judah’s fortunes and disappears from the Bible altogether. The remaining names in the genealogy are unknown to us.  They are names that have been lost to history.  In a sense they are those forgotten on a desert island who are seemingly never rescued and pass away without ever getting to come home to the land of promise which their ancestors were promised by God.  What I mean by that statement is that the Jews continued to live under a succession of empires: Persian, Greek, Egyptian, Hasmonean, and Roman. Each of these empires spoke strange languages, had strange customs, and worshiped strange gods. The plight of God’s people would then seem hopeless. They would always be stranded. Yet, the genealogy does not end in despair. Instead, it ends with Jesus, the son of Mary and Joseph who is the Messiah. In other words, the genealogy reminds the readers that the one who will take them home, take them to the Kingdom of God, has arrived, and is at work.  It reminds them that God was always there. This is also where the Christmas story becomes our story.  It reminds us that even when we feel as if we are castaways, that we are not.  Christ is always present, making a home for us wherever we are.

      I suppose that I could stop here and simply say a bit more about Christ’s constant presence and then call it a day.  Yet I believe there is a second aspect of this genealogy that we need to dwell on for a moment, and that is how we should live as castaways.  In other words, if we are castaways, what ought we to do?  Should we give up? Should we panic?  I ask this because what is interesting about God’s people in exile is that they moved quickly from focusing on how to get home, to focusing on how to be at home where they were.  We know this because the books of Ezra-Nehemiah, which are about Zerubbabel’s return, tell us that the people in Judea had not celebrated Passover or other festivals in generations. They had not kept the Sabbath or what we call keeping kosher. To use Biblical language, the people had not walked in the ways of God. This all changed in the exile. The people in exile in Babylon began to rediscover what it meant to be the people of God; to live like the people of God; to be faithful as the people of God. And what this renewal brought was joy.  The people discovered the joy of loving God and neighbor, of celebrating God’s presence and provision. This renewal did not end in Babylon but continued into the time of Jesus, where the people continued to discover the joy of being God’s people. So, even when they felt like castaways, by focusing on being God’s faithful people they found a home away from home; a home filled with joy..

      I believe that you and I are called to do the same. We are called by the Christmas story to continue to renew our faith day in and day out, week in and week out, year in and year out, because in that renewal it doesn’t matter whether we are stranded on a desert island or are at home in front of a roaring fire, we can find our sense of Christ’s presence offering us what we need in every moment.  My challenge for this week then is this, to ask ourselves, how am I renewing my faith in such a way that I can continue to find the joy God offers in Jesus Christ? 

The Christmas Story is Our Story: Faith and Failure

12/4/2022

 
Rev. Dr. John Judson
December 4, 2022

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Jeremiah 22:3-5; Matthew 1:6-11

      It was just another master’s thesis, or at least so thought the author and his professor.  But before Teddy was able to have his thesis finally approved and was allowed to collect his diploma he would be sued, face a parliamentary inquest, be forced to apologize to the nation, admit the conclusion of the paper was incorrect, and then change his thesis.  People on the street thought he should have known better.  But Teddy Katz truly believed he was right, that during Israel’s war for independence the Israeli forces had committed a massacre in the village of Tantura. There had long been rumors of such an event and Katz wanted to discover the truth.  So he interviewed not only Palestinian survivors but one of the soldiers who participated in the actions in Tantura.  They confirmed his suspicions. Unfortunately for Katz, this narrative of a massacre went against the official narrative of the government which was that the residents voluntarily fled Tantura and therefore Israel could occupy it as abandoned.  It would be difficult to describe the furor that followed.  Ultimately, Katz apologized and changed his conclusions, which was a shame because he was correct. He was proven correct by a recent documentary that interviewed most of the remaining Israeli soldiers who were at Tantura who admitted on camera that they had indeed killed around two-hundred men, women, and children and then buried their bodies under what is now a parking lot.

      I do not tell this story this morning to shame Israel. In what Israel calls the 1948 War of Independence and the Palestinians call the Nakba, or Palestinian catastrophe, both sides engaged in the killing not only of combatants, but also non-combatants. I tell the story instead because it reminds us that every nation and people write their own histories in which they are the good guys; in which they are the heroes, and those they either defeated or lost to are the evil Empire. Sometimes these narratives are true. Sometimes they are not. But no nation ever truly wants to remember the moments when their actions demonstrated that they might not have been very good guys. And it is that concept that makes what we read this morning so amazing.  This concept is what makes the Christmas Story far more than just a lovely tale about angels, a star, and a baby.  I say this because the genealogy we read this morning is an indictment of the people of God.  It is so because it contains a list of Judaic kings who represent the good, the bad, and the ugly of Israelite history.  Let me explain.

      This genealogy contains good kings.  These are Uzziah, Hezekiah, and Josiah.  These were the faithful kings. Each of these kings inherited a wayward people who had wandered far from the path that God had set for God’s people. The nation had forgotten its purpose as we discussed last week of loving God, loving neighbor, and caring for the world. These kings worked hard to not only protect the nation but to realign the nation with this purpose, which was contained in its founding narrative.  Then there were the bad kings, the names of which will surprise you.  These are David, Solomon, and Rehoboam.  I realize most of us have been taught to revere the first two of these kings. But what we need to do is to examine how they are referenced. David is mentioned as the father of Solomon by “the wife of Uriah.” This seemingly obscure reference reminds us that David committed adultery with Bathsheba and then had her husband Uriah killed to cover up the affair. David and Bathsheba’s subsequent son, Solomon, while praised as being wise, enslaved his people, married foreign women, and worshiped their gods. His son, Rehoboam, split the kingdom.  Finally, we have the ugly kings, Ahaz and Manasseh.  Each of these kings oppressed the people, built altars to foreign gods in the Jerusalem Temple, and attempted to stamp out the worship of YHWH.  Manasseh even reinstituted child sacrifice.  The question becomes, why does Matthew mention this lineage when it could have been avoided as it is in Luke, or not mentioned at all as in Mark and John?  I believe that there are three important reasons.

      Reason number one is that it demonstrates why a savior is needed.  Let’s assume for a moment that Jesus’ lineage was composed of nothing but good guys who always did the right thing; who always led the nation into fulfilling its purpose of loving God, loving neighbor, and caring for creation. Why would they need a savior? It would appear that they were fully capable of being good on their own. They would have no need for a messiah to save them from their sins and redirect their lives back to purposeful living.  The Law, the Torah, was all they needed to be faithful people.  What this lineage reminds Matthew’s readers though was that the history of God’s people was one of faithfulness and failure. It was a mixed bag of the good, the bad, and the ugly. It was a reminder that if God’s people were to accomplish their purpose, they needed help. They needed a messiah.

      Reason number two is that this allows the Christmas story to become our story.  Now I can only speak for myself, but my life has not always been one of complete faithfulness. There have been times when I have failed to live up to my purpose of loving God, loving neighbor, and caring for creation. I realize this probably does not apply to any of you gathered here this morning.  However, I will ask if there is anyone else here this morning who feels the same way that, perhaps sometime this week, you might have said, done, or thought something which would make God just kind of shake God’s head?  Any of you?  Ok, glad I am not alone.  So, what this story does is remind us why we too need the one born in a stable; the one come to set us free; the one come to forgive; the one come to help us fulfill our purpose.  This story is our story.

      Reason number three is that this story reminds us of God’s love.  When my wife, Cindy, was helping to proof the bulletins this week, she looked at me and said, “You do realize that the candle we are lighting is the ‘love’ candle and your sermon title is ‘Faith and Failure’?”  My in-deft reply was, “Yep.”  My yep, was a recognition that above all, this is a story of God’s love. I say that because God would have been perfectly justified in giving up on the people of Israel and even God’s purpose for humanity, yet God refuses to do so. God’s love and covenant faithfulness were so great that even in the times of the bad and ugly kings, God’s love never failed. And the same can be said for our lives, that God’s love never ends for us. Even when we mess up, even when we fail in living out our purpose, God’s love does not fail.  God’s love in and through Jesus Christ continues to be made real in us, that we might begin again to love God, love others, and care for God’s creation.

      The challenge that I want to offer you for this day then, is to ask yourself: Am I allowing God to love me in both my faith and failures, such that I can love others in the same way?

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