 Years ago someone in the church took me to the firing range. It was clear that he felt that this was part of “equipping the saints.” I did not grow up with guns and I was pastoring a church in Vermont. And I agreed that being all things to all people might mean getting familiar with a .22 rifle.
I kind of enjoyed it, but haven’t been back since. The chief dividend of that experience seems to have been the sermon illustrations. Here’s one: When it comes to gratitude you want to aim well and use live ammunition. Some of our neighbors are really grateful and it’s to their credit. But they don’t have a good idea of who exactly to thank for the blessings in their lives. They express their gratitude, putting it out in the world and their sentiment hangs like a cloud of mist over their heads for a bit before evaporating away. It’s like going to the firing range, and just sending your live ammunition willy-nilly in volleys at the sky instead of the target. But then some of us know exactly who to direct our gratitude toward and we are careful to aim well, minding our breathing, squinting down the sight. And then shoot blanks. Our gratitude might veer into the abstract. Or we say we are grateful for something we privately think we were entitled to or could take credit for if we didn’t feel obliged to give God the glory for it. But we, the people of God, should be of all our countrymen celebrating Thanksgiving today the most successful at it. We see the target clearly and God has supplied us with an abundant cache of ammunition. Nothing but bullseyes all day long. Jesus has been very good to us, the sheep of his pasture. And my prayer is that all of the people of Furnace Brook end the day today with full bellies and empty chambers. God bless you all!
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 Rob Henderson, author of "Troubled: A Memoir of Foster Care, Family, and Social Class" When John and Charles Wesley led what came to be known as the Methodist Revival in Great Britain it meant salvation for hundreds of thousands of people. But there were social implications too. All the people who, having been saved and having resolved to be holy, gave up drinking and gambling and worked “as unto the Lord,” so that they left behind their generational dysfunctions and poverty, made the British Empire strong at precisely the time when France was sinking into a violent and destructive revolution.
The Wesleys preached grace, but they also preached practical holiness and they did it without embarrassment or apology. They were confident that holy behavior pleased God and was a blessing to the individual and the individual’s community. So they told people what to do with their money, how much to sleep, how to educate their children, how to treat their animals, how to treat their employees and a host of other things. This past Sunday when I leaned into Wesley’s sermon “On the Use of Money,” I confess to being a little uncomfortable with telling you all what to do, even though it is what I myself do and even though my personal experience has validated that direction at every turn. Author and psychologist Rob Henderson, has written extensively on what he calls “luxury beliefs.” He has observed how elites in our culture often signal their virtue by promoting on the cultural level beliefs that they reject in their private experience. He observes, for instance, how many of the loudest voices calling for “body positivity” belong to people who evidently have gym memberships. He calls them “luxury” beliefs because they can hold and espouse these beliefs at little cost to themselves, or at a cost their privilege and advantages make it easy for them to afford. People with lots of resources and privileged social networks can afford a level of intoxication that would result in job loss, bankruptcy, and family dissolution in the case of a poor person. But these luxury beliefs, like most luxury purchases, are bought on credit. And the bill is coming due. It always comes due. Vermont is wealthy and it still has stockpiles of cultural heritage to draw down. But it can not afford indefinitely the luxury beliefs it holds. Children being sacrificed on the altar of gender identity, a generation of Vermonters being lost to the abuse of alcohol, marijuana, and other drugs, sexual promiscuity and broken marriages . . . Vermont can’t afford this much longer. The time is right for a Wesleyan message, for a people who insist on grace, but who also have a confident and robust message about what “shalom” looks like and what it requires. Vermont needs practical holiness and it needs to hear that message from holy people who love Vermont and Jesus.  This can be a difficult time of year to drive in Rutland. Much of the striping on the roads has been worn off and what remains is sometimes obscured by snow and grit. Out of staters, who are driving through on their way to or from the slopes, are doing their best to surmise the proper lanes. But their guesses often run contrary to precedent and they end up irking local drivers who are still heeding lines that are painted nowhere but in their determined memories. It’s a wonder there aren’t more collisions.
Here’s a little vocabulary for you; “mores” (pronounced mor-aze) is a word that means all of the conventions, norms, and cultural expectations of a society. The sense that if someone tells you “good morning” you are obliged to respond in kind is not a matter of morality or law, but of our mores. Now the distinction between mores and morality and the law can get blurry in places, and there is overlap. A particular transgression may only have legal significance, or only moral significance, or may only matter in the social realm. Or a transgression may have implications in all three areas. But here’s an important difference between these three. Morality does not change (not from time to time, or place to place, or person to person.) Laws, when they change, do so definitively: one day it’s illegal to bet on sports, the next day it’s all but mandatory. But mores are tricky. Sometimes a culture’s mores are definite and enforced. But there are seasons when the mores are up for negotiation, when, after a long winter, the lines on the road that we’ve relied on for smooth traffic, are barely discernible and easily ignored. During those seasons new traffic patterns emerge. Suddenly, drivers who are sticklers for the old, “right” way of driving are the ones whose stubborn insistence on precedent is the cause of the accidents that inevitably occur. The new lines don’t start faint and then grow bold over time. When the cultural road crew puts down the new lines, lines that reflect the new traffic patterns, they get put down in vivid yellow and bright white, and everyone has to come to terms with these new lines or get off the road. Hardly anyone maintains an objection to women wearing tights in public anymore, but quaint as it might seem to you, that was a matter of much contention until pretty recently. Why am I devoting so much space in our church’s newsletter to this topic? The church tends to be filled with the sort of people who as drivers in March are making a point of faithfully abiding by traffic lines that have grown so faint that many others are disregarding them with a clear conscience. We can be sticklers. I am the worst stickler of all. And that’s not all bad. Sometimes the old traffic patterns are, objectively, superior to the new ones. But we, as an outpost of the Kingdom, are responsible for the gospel and for shalom, the right ordering of the world. When we get preoccupied with the business of policing mores we tie up energy in defense of the previous ordering of the world that ought to be going to the right ordering of the world. Houghton University is a Wesleyan school in Western New York which was founded by a man who was saved from a disastrous life by a wonderful Jesus. He founded a school where other people, regardless of class or background or financial condition, could be equipped to join him in the work of pursuing “shalom” in Jesus’ name. And Willard Houghton signed all his letters with “Yours For Fixing Up the World.” I love that. If we’ve been guilty of resigning ourselves to all sorts of potholes in the road, so long as people stay within our painted lines, let’s repent. Let’s devote ourselves to “fixing up the world” for Jesus in such a way that our neighbors are glad to have us on the imperfect road with them. Jesus never wears any disguise but the ones we insist on seeing when we look at him. He was a real baby, not someone cleverly disguised as one. It’s not that he looked like a baby, it’s just that a baby wasn’t what we were looking for.
Similarly, at his Crucifixion the placard and the crown of thorns, both of which were provided by Roman soldiers with cruel irony, were not a disguise because he really was and is a King. In the stable at his birth he was not the kingly Son of God disguised as a helpless person, and on the cross he was not a helpless person disguised as the kingly Son of God. He was, in both instances, a helpless person. And he was, in both instances, the kingly Son of god. Praise him! Matthew 27:37 Prayer: I love you, Jesus, for being all of who you are. I confess that you are sometimes more than or other than what I was looking for. Help me to love you just as well when that’s the case. Because I know that if I’m ever surprised by you it’s not because you’ve misled me. Song: Another new Christmas song today! The Gray Havens song “Come Behold the Wondrous Mystery” captures wonderfully the beauty of a Savior whose very nature is essentially mysterious. If you would grasp him at all, you must accept that he is beyond your grasping. Serendipity is the good thing you discover when you are searching for something else. A scientist employed by 3M was trying in 1968 to come up with a powerful glue when he discovered, by chance, the pressure sensitive, tacky adhesive we know from post-it notes. It was unlooked for and was, for years, scorned at 3M as the “solution without a problem.” It wasn’t until 1980, twelve years after the discovery, that post-it notes were made nationally available.
It shouldn’t come as a surprise that Jesus is often regarded as a disappointment and a missed mark by people who find him while looking for something else. Our Christmastime narratives can’t afford to admit it, but doesn’t it seem likely that the shepherds were more impressed with the angels and the magi more impressed with the star than they were with the infant to which the angels and the star had pointed them. Could you blame them if they found the baby and his parents a bit of a let down? Some people come upon Jesus while looking for something to make them more successful at life, a job for which Jesus is ill-suited. Some people come upon Jesus while looking for a political identity (good luck with that!) All sorts of things bring all sorts of people to the Jesus they weren’t looking for . . . but who was looking for them. And he is less offended (he’s not an insecure King) than he is amused by their perplexity and resignation. Matthew 21:42 Prayer: If I’ve been slow on the uptake and have had a hard time seeing you for who you are because I was looking for something else, I repent. Open my eyes. Give me a proper imagination where you are concerned and make me an “early adapter.” Let me be among the first to recognize you and to perceive what you’re up to, wherever you are and whatever you’re doing. Song: The Oh Hello’s Mvmt IV: Every Bell on Earth Will Ring is a little longer than others we’ve commended to you, but worth a listen for the heartfelt way that they take us through this medley of Christmas carols to bring us to a crescendo of worship. No one did any reconnaissance for Jesus’ arrival in Bethlehem. There was no security detail showing up days ahead of him to scope things out and “establish a perimeter.”
And when Jesus did arrive, it was not in the company of an impressive entourage. The only people he had with him were the two people who had brought him, and they weren’t armed with anything. The angels were sidelined, relegated to the job of alerting shepherds to what was happening. Everyone comes into the world naked, but this was something else. And yet, somehow, a mother and a father were sufficient and God was pleased with their sufficiency. Have you ever met someone who had a security detail? It’s ironic because having bodyguards is a clear indication of insecurity, a fear of violence that the object of that guarding is not strong enough to handle on his own. But we’re conditioned to think that only the powerful and those with authority enjoy this measure of protection. In Washington among government officials, being assigned a security detail, regardless of whether or not you are threatened, is a coveted sign of your “arrival,” an indication that you are a real big deal. And, truthfully, if any of us were in a crowd experiencing an emergency we would all look to the guy with a security detail for leadership and defer to his orders for no better reason than the fact that he was flanked by two big galoots with serious expressions. And our Savior, when he made his appearance, had for a “security detail” an exhausted woman and a beleaguered man, neither of whom were proficient in jiu jitsu. Revelation 5:12 Prayer: Help me, Jesus, to have sanctified expectations. I know you’re not like other lords. You’re apt to be alone when I find you, or, as with the disciples in Samaria when they had left you alone at a well, in the company of unexpected people. So be it. You be you. Just help me to keep up. Song: The Brilliance’s version of Lo, How a Rose E’er Blooming is perfect with its stripped down arrangement and emphasis on vocal harmonies. It doesn’t always work, but one classroom management technique that teachers sometimes use, when their classroom has gotten competitively loud, is to stop shouting and to whisper. There is a hush that rings loud for having quieted us. When Jesus made his debut in Bethlehem, as opposed to Jerusalem, it was not just about ticking the prophetic box or demonstrating humility (Bethlehem was to the other cities of Israel, what the manger was to the other cribs at the time,) or even because the Roman emperor had decreed it. There was a very practical reason for Jesus to be born in such a place.
It might have been more fitting for Jesus, being a king, to have been born in a palace. But the palace, like every room in Bethlehem, was occupied. And those who occupy palaces are possessively protective of them. Perhaps you’ve heard a missionary return from a developing country in chastened awe, reporting that people living on $1 a day were cheerfully generous with what little they had, insisting that the well-nourished Western guest eat the biggest and best portions. In many places throughout history you’d be better off depending on the camaraderie of the poorest people in that place than the generosity of the wealthiest ones. It’s easier to catch a ride in a crowded minivan than it is to catch a ride in a spacious limousine. Jesus came to Bethlehem and not the palace because Bethlehem was the sort of place where you could expect people to scoot over and make a little room. Not so the palace. If you’re ever surprised to find Jesus among people whose company you yourself would not keep, or surprised at his conspicuous absence among the people you admire, bear this in mind. People who scoot, who make room, who set an extra place (even when they can only do it metaphorically because they lack a table and place settings) are the sort of people to whom Jesus comes. He is an opportunistic Savior. Let us be hospitable people, and let us, like our Savior, aspire less to the palaces where we’re not wanted than to the places where we might have a place. Matthew 8:20 Prayer: Lord, if I have not been hospitable please forgive me. If I am reluctant to scoot down and make room, help me remember that it might be, in some sense, you I am making room for. And help me to be someone who is content with whatever places you make for me. There’s a part of me that’s always whispering that I belong in the “palace.” wherever that is. Help me to make that part of me shut up and stay quiet. Song: I love Wilder Adkins! And this version of “Royal David’s City” shows all the reasons why I appreciate him so much. It is a fresh arrangement of the traditional carol, but it is so sweet and earnest that it does not feel like a calculated attempt at novelty at all. And what a carol it is! (I also love the artwork!) If Jesus showed up at a party that you were attending and someone tried to “kidnap” him in broad daylight, by putting a possessive hand on his elbow and trying to steer him around the room while monopolizing his time and attention, we don’t have to wonder how he would handle that.
He’s not easily manipulated or controlled, this Jesus of ours. He never has been. When he was a religious celebrity in Judea the religious leaders were always there wanting to tie him up in the sort of tricky theological discussions that they loved. He gave them brief answers that made them angry and that freed him up to spend time with real people. When his disciples turned children away to prevent them making a claim on Jesus for blessings, Jesus had none of it. He rebuked the gatekeepers and made room for the children. And when he came as a baby he demonstrated that he would not be the possession of Herod for violence, the possession of the magi for purposes of government, the possession of the shepherds for validation, or even the possession of his parents for progeny. Be assured, dear friend, that Jesus has come for you. He does not belong to some group of special people. He doesn’t need to satisfy someone else’s demands before he can attend to your own private needs. He is for you and with you and no one else, however privileged he appears to be, can come between you and the Jesus who has sought you out. Matthew 19:13-14 Prayer: Help me to remember, Lord, that the self-appointed gatekeepers are no threat to my place in your heart or in your Kingdom. That’s hard for me because of my insecurities, I admit, but I believe that you can make me confident. And, while we’re at it, please forgive me for any time that I was a self-appointed gatekeeper myself and prevent me from ever doing that in the future. Song: Part of the reason I love “O Christ, Draw Near” is because of Taylor Leonhardt’s vocals. But what I really love and appreciate are the earnest lyrics. I have been hugged so fiercely by someone I love so deeply that I have wished that the hug could succeed in squeezing the two of us into one inseparable unit. In Bethlehem, God initiated such an embrace and at Christmas we squeeze a little tighter in anticipation of that day when the work of the great hug will be complete. Jesus’ brother James makes a big deal about the sin of showing favoritism in his letter. He calls out the sort of church leader, for instance, who would show well dressed people to the best seats when they show up for a worship service, while keeping the poorly dressed people on the uncomfortable margins. It’s scripture, but you also get the impression that for James it’s personal.
It’s a family value, it seems. If Jesus was a high school student, it’s hard to imagine him gravitating toward the cool kid’s table in the lunchroom. If Jesus was at a game, it’s hard to imagine him watching it from the owner’s box. Jesus is not impressed with the things that impress us. Prophecy required that Jesus’ parents have a royal pedigree. But Jesus' mission required that they not have a royal lifestyle. How good it is to have a Savior like this who comes and sits at our table not to make a point or to demonstrate his noble largesse, but for the simple reason that he wants to be with us. Revelation 3:20 Prayer - I repent, Jesus, of all the ways in which I am a respecter of persons. You have not shown favoritism or you would not have made yourself my friend. So help me not to show favoritism any more than you do. Song - I love the line in “Bring a Torch, Jeanette Isabella,” that says “Jesus is born to the folk of the village.” Not born to the upper echelons of society, to the elite and the influencers. Born to the folk of the village. Savor that. |
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