The message of Christmas

 

A Sermon preached on 24 December 2023 (Pentecost XV) at St. Augustine’s, WI 

Isaiah 9:2-7, Titus 2:11-14, Luke 2:1-14

This is the fourth time I’ve read all or part of the nativity story from Luke’s Gospel today. The first time was in German at the Teestube homeless day centre before the meal we served them at lunchtime. The second time was in several languages at 1 pm the Hauptbahnhof as part of an ecumenical Christmas service, the third time was this afternoon at the family service, when it was more acted than read, and the fourth and final time was here, to you at our Midnight Mass. Homeless and lonely people have heard it, travellers have heard it, children and families have heard it, you’ve heard it, and at least this afternoon angels, shepherds, sheep, trees and various animals and birds heard it – or at least people dressed up as such. And these four readings are just a few of the countless readings of Luke’s nativity story in churches all over the world today and tomorrow!

That is right and proper: This is a message that is supposed to be spread throughout the world. As we just heard, angel of the Lord said to the shepherds, “I am bringing you good news of great joy for all the people.” (Luke 2:10) This message is so important that heavenly messengers, angels are sent to convey it. First the angel, Gabriel, who appeared to Mary to tell her that she would bear a son, and name him Jesus. Then the unnamed angel who appeared to the shepherds in the fields, and finally a multitude of the heavenly host.

What is the message? It is about a person, a seemingly helpless child born in the humblest and most unlikely of circumstances. Yet, the angels have come to announce that this baby is special, that this baby is holy, that this baby – as the angel Gabriel had already told Mary - will “be great and will be called the Son of the Most High, and the Lord God will give to him the throne of his ancestor David.” (Luke 1:32) and that this baby is – as the angel tells the shepherds - Savior, Messiah, and Lord. Those are big titles. This baby will save or deliver us, this baby is the anointed or chosen one, this baby is the true king and lord of all. This baby is the love of God poured into a person. This baby is God’s promise to the world. Yes, that is a message worth repeating and worth transmitting to everyone!

So why do the angels first appear, to “certain poor shepherds … in fields as they lay, keeping their sheep,” as the carol The First Noel puts it? I have seen arguments that this is a sign that God really is for everyone, especially the poor and the labourers, and not just the rich and powerful – though they get a look in later in Matthew’ Gospel with the 3 kings or magi.  And I agree. The requirement to care for the poor, the stranger, the excluded is a consistent message throughout the Bible, both in the Old and New Testaments.

But for Israel shepherds were special. For a while, Moses was a shepherd. King David was a shepherd - anointed king on God’s behalf by the prophet Samuel, in Bethlehem. The leaders of Israel were often referred to as shepherds of their people, sometimes as bad ones when they neglected their people (Ezekiel 34). In Ezekiel God says “I myself will be the shepherd of my sheep. And so, it makes a lot of sense to choose shepherds to reveal who Jesus will be, the Great Shepherd, the Good Shepherd, the true shepherd-king, the servant king.

Fulfilling Isaiah’s prophecy, Jesus is the child born for us, the son given to us who is named Wonderful Counselor, Mighty God, Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace and who will bring not just peace, but peace with justice and with righteousness, and who will usher in God’s reign on earth as it is in heaven. We get a taste of this in the final verse, when the heavenly host praise God saying, “Glory to God in the highest heaven, and on earth peace among those whom he favours” (Luke 2:14) or as some sources have it, “peace, goodwill among people.” And in case you are wondering who God favours, it is all of us. Then favour is just another word for grace, and therefore the angels’ announcement of an offering of peace on earth for all those to whom God has shown grace is an offering of peace for all of us.

And we need peace, not the peace that comes from military might and coercive force, but a peace based on justice and mercy. The people of Jesus’ time knew peace of course, but it was the Pax Romana, the Roman peace an absence of war, but imposed by force, violence, might and fear. It was the peace of an occupying power, and that never lasts. The power behind the peace that Jesus offers is power of self-giving love, shown not only in his humble birth as a human baby, but also in his sacrifice on the Cross! Jesus’ peace is the peace of shalom encompassing peace, wholeness, health, and well-being. Jesus brought and brings peace on earth and goodwill to all people by reconciling us to God and to one another with the power of love that casts out fear and hate.

The message of the nativity is a message of hope. That God cares. That we can be saved from the results of evil, sin and our own selfishness that express themselves in war, oppression, poverty, flight, and the rejection of the stranger. When we celebrate the Messiah’s birth, we look forward to the day when his reign of justice, mercy, and peace will come in all its fullness, and we work actively to bring it about because we truly believe it is possible. As Michael Curry, Presiding Bishop of the Episcopal Church said in his Christmas message, the message of the angels is that we can “trust and believe in the invincibility of the good in spite of the titanic reality of evil, because God is good all the time. (We can) trust and believe in the enduring power of love, of truth, of the good, and of justice when the reality of the opposite seems so prodigious. (We can) trust and believe in the enduring power of love, justice, kindness, and compassion, all because God is love and the author of all that is true, noble, and just.”[1]

The message of the nativity is a simple one, beautifully summarised in Christina Rossetti’s poem and Christmas Carol: “Love came down at Christmas”.

Love came down at Christmas,

Love all lovely, Love Divine,

Love was born at Christmas,

Star and Angels gave the sign.

This is the sign the world needed and still needs. Love motivates us, love strengthens us, and love empowers us. And the third and final verse of Rossetti’s poem / carol tells us what to do with this gift of love, with this sign of God’s favour:

Love shall be our token,

Love be yours and love be mine,

Love to God and all men,

Love for plea and gift and sign.

Amen.

 

 

 

---

[1] https://www.episcopalchurch.org/publicaffairs/presiding-bishop-michael-currys-christmas-message-2023-a-sign-for-you/

Multiplying Love

A Sermon preached on 19 November 2023 (Pentecost XV) at St. Augustine’s, WI

Judges 4:1-7, 1 Thessalonians 5:1-11, Matthew 25:14-30

Last Sunday was our “Stewardship Sunday.” Thank you to everyone who has pledged so far. We have up to now received 39 new or renewed pledge forms and so, assuming everyone who pledged last year gives the same amount as 2023 then we can currently expect income from pledges €94.000 which is 94% of our target. Not only do we still hope and really need to reach 100% of our target, we also hope that 100% of our church community will pledge, i.e. that everyone will make a regular planned financial commitment – whatever the amount, large or small. So, it’s a shame that we did not have today’s Gospel reading last week. Then I could have threatened you all with outer darkness, where there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth, for not having made more of and fully returned the talents God has given you.

That would be wrong for so many reasons! For one thing it would be a form of spiritual abuse, defined as “manipulative, or coercive behaviour in a religious context” and often including “control through the use of sacred texts or teaching.” That is not how I operate and is certainly not the message Jesus intends with this parable. We do not motivate with fear and threats. “Do not be afraid!” is a recurring phrase throughout the Bible, both in the OT and NT. In Deuteronomy Moses tells the Israelites: “Have no fear or dread of them, because it is the Lord your God who goes with you; he will not fail you or forsake you.” (Deut. 3:16) In John’s Gospel Jesus says to his disciples, “Do not let your hearts be troubled, and do not let them be afraid.” (John 14.27) and the author of the First Letter of John (4:18) tells his readers, “There is no fear in love, but perfect love casts out fear; for fear has to do with punishment, and whoever fears has not reached perfection in love.”  Not forgetting today’s passage from 1 Thessalonians (5:9-11), when we heard Paul trying to take away their fear of the day of the Lord, their fear of judgement or punishment for not being ready or prepared:

“For God has destined us not for wrath but for obtaining salvation through our Lord Jesus Christ, who died for us, so that whether we are awake or asleep we may live with him. Therefore encourage one another and build up each other, as indeed you are doing.” Threatening you all with outer darkness would not be very encouraging.

The key to interpreting Jesus’ Parable of the Talents is deciding what the talents stand for. A talent was originally a unit of weight of approximately 80 pounds, and when used as a unit of money, was valued for that weight of silver. So as a unit of currency, a talent was worth about 6,000 denarii (and one denarius was the usual payment for a day's labour). That means each talent was worth about 20 years of labour. Whether the slaves received 5, 2 or one talent – it was an enormous amount and a huge expression of trust on behalf of the master! There is a parallel parable to this one in Luke’s Gospel (19:11-27) and in it the servants also receive money, but a different and smaller unit, a minas.

In Matthew, each slave receives a different amount “according to his ability.” That’s probably where the common idea of interpreting the parable with the talents standing for aptitude, ability or skill comes from. The master rides off into the sunset and two of the three slaves immediately start making money out of money. I won’t dwell too long on the morals of making so much money at that time, but it would be difficult to double the investment without some sort of exploitation, or some kind of unethical and aggressive trading. And later in the parable, when the master tells the third slave that he could at least have invested his money with bankers to gain interest, that would seem to contradict a number of OT laws (e.g. Exodus 22:25, Deuteronomy 23:19-20) prohibiting usury, lending money with interest!  In that sense the morals of the parable and the morals of the Kingdom of God do not align very well. But of course, Jesus is not describing an ideal world – the setting is the real world.

The third slave does not make any money, he simply buries and hides the treasure out of fear! The parable of the buried treasure earlier in Matthew (14:44) indicates that this was not an unusual strategy. The master returns and, as we heard the first two slaves are rewarded – equally by the way, they receive exactly the same praise: Both are put in charge of many things, and both enter into the joy of their master. He is however not happy at all with the third slave, neither with his strategy nor with his reasoning, and certainly not with just getting his money back and so that unlucky man loses all and is punished.

My Wednesday Bible Study group found this very unfair! And very un-Godlike. Surely our God is generous and compassionate and forgiving. Yes, God is. But this is a parable, and not an allegory. Not everything can be given a meaning or has an exact equivalent. The figure of the master is not God, and the capitalist values of the parable are not kingdom values. There is a rabbinic principle of interpretation called “qal vāḥomer” or “How Much More” that Jesus also uses. For example, in Matthew 7:11 Jesus says: “If you then, who are evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your Father in heaven give good things to those who ask him!” Jesus doesn’t use the words “how much more” here, but I think it is what he is doing: If a master of this world expects his slaves to do so much with his money, how much more will God expect God’s followers to do with God’s gifts.

So, what do the talents stand for? Not I think our abilities. God sent Jesus to us with the Good News, the Gospel truth of a God who is love and made us to love. Our master’s property is love and compassion. How do we multiply love? By sharing love. By showing love. By loving God and our neighbour. God wants us to work with this “talent” to create a great harvest. We know from the parable of the sower (Matthew 13:1-23) that when God’s word lands on fertile ground, it produces thirty, sixty, even one hundred-fold. But God’s word has to be used, it has to be spread, it has to be shared. And that will produce great joy – God’s joy and our joy.

Those who do not make use of the talent, clearly do not know, or understand God and Jesus. They hide the Gospel behind rules and exclusion and prejudice. They cling to a God whose primary desire seems to be to set boundaries on love, who hates and punishes sinners, and so they never share the real Gospel. The slave who ends up in the outer darkness put himself there. In his book the Great Divorce C.S. Lewis writes: “There are only two kinds of people in the end: those who say to God, “Thy will be done.” And those to whom God says in the end, “Thy will be done.” All that are in Hell, choose it. Without that self-choice there would be no Hell.”

Those who choose to ignore God’s gift and command of love often create hell on earth, that hell on earth that our Ukrainian brothers and sisters experience when their cities are bombed, that hell on earth that 1.200 Israelis experienced during the Hamas attacks on 7 October in towns near the border with Gaza, and at a music festival, and that hell on earth that the Palestinians in Gaza are currently experiencing.

Let me finish with the motto of our stewardship campaign, taken from 1 Peter (4:10) just slightly adapted: “Use whatever gift you have received to serve and love others, as faithful stewards of God’s grace in its various forms.”

Amen.