Sermons

Many have called Tamar’s tale scandalous. But focusing on the dicey details obscures the reason she might be included in Matthew’s version of Jesus genealogy: God will use what God will to accomplish God’s will. Tamar illustrates God’s definition of righteousness, which is concerned for the vulnerable. We see this unexpected kind of righteousness so often in Jesus' ministry we should expect it by now; Jesus talked with and ate with many whom society considers scandalous and unworthy. Jesus' righteousness is doubly inherited. First from his divine parent who cares for the least, the lost and the left out. And also from his grandmother Tamar, who shows us that God’s righteousness transcends our imperfect, human laws and systems. Righteousness is the trait passed through the bloodline of Jesus’ ancestry.
Perhaps part of Matthew’s point in giving us this royal but checkered pedigree is to show us that God can use anything, anything at all, to bring about God’s purposes in God’s story on God’s green earth. History happens at this coincidence, this coherence, this meeting, of twisted human connivance and stealthy divine providence, so that despite all the turns and meanderings and dead ends of human history, God comes up with Jesus, the most perfect life that’s ever been lived. God uses what is mixed and fixes what is broken and heals what is sick and points the lost in the right direction.

Snow

December 31, 2023
Who’s read Pat Conroy’s novel The Prince of Tides? You won’t fire me if I tell you, it’s my third or fourth favorite book of all time, will you? The Prince of Tides came out in 1986. In 1987 a member of my first church invited us to spend a few days at their place in Kiawah Island, not far from Charleston. Kiawah Island is a world of vast salt marshes and river deltas, where shrimp boats ply the coastal waters. The Prince of Tides is set not far away in coastal Carolina. I’d already devoured the novel when it first came out, but Kathy got to read The Prince of Tides right there in the novel’s own world. Have you ever read a book in its own unique geography? The Great Gatsby on Long Island, or The Grapes of Wrath in Oklahoma’s Dust Bowl or the orchards of California, or Huck Finn on the Mississippi, or Moby Dick in Nantucket?
It’s possible that Luke’s congregation was filled with blue collar people and Uber drivers and day laborers from the gig economy. Luke wanted his congregation to know that Jesus came for them too, in fact came primarily for them. Bible scholars are fond of talking about St. Luke’s pronounced, powerful, persistent, pervasive, peculiar preference for the poor, the pitiful, and the persecuted.
The night provokes our most carnal fears and becomes a canvas on which to paint our deepest longings and desires. Diane Tucker quickly mixes her metaphors: “down the winter solstice… be with us in our waiting, lamenting.” And we do too. Like Psalm 88 in which the psalmist cries, “incline your ear to my cry” for I am in the “dark and deep” with eyes that grow dim with “so much sorrow,” we can’t help but equate the long nights of winter with the dark nights of the soul. Even our Christmas carols, which you might expect to evoke joy, in fact carry a kind of minor key. “Have yourself a Merry Little Christmas” which sounds like it should be the most merry tune Judy Garland wants us to sing “someday soon we all will be together, if the fates allow, until then we’ll have to muddle through somehow.” And muddle we do.
O God of words and music. They are the two integral components of divine worship. We couldn’t choir the proper praise if one or the other were missing: words and music, sermon and song. It’s Lisa’s job to make sure that you can hear the words within the music. She has her choirs ENUNCIATE! “And suddenly, there was with the angel a multitude of heavenly host praising God...” If it’s Lisa’s job to make sure that you hear the words within the music, it’s my job to make sure you hear the music within the words. Be-cause words can sing, can’t they?
The Scripture Lesson this morning comes from The Gospel of St. John. On the third day there was a wedding in Cana of Galilee, and the mother of Jesus was…
Pseudo-Dionysius the Areopagite said in the sixth century that in every creature, from dragonfly to behemoth, something of God’s inexhaustible nature is revealed, something that would not be revealed if that creature did not exist. At creation, God’s overflowing nature spills out of its bounds and out into every creature. Every living creature tells us something unique about God, so that in man and woman, for example, we see God’s very face and God’s vast intelligence; in the smiling chimpanzee we see something of God’s smirking sense of humor; in the wolverine we see something of God’s startling ferocity...;
https://subsplash.com/kenilworthunionchurch/media/mi/+44jjdhz As you’ve heard from Katie and our fearless Advent candle lighters, Advent is going to be six weeks long starting today. Now you should know that most of Christendom…
It is our greatest joy and our greatest regret, our greatest meaning, our greatest purpose, our greatest goal. It is what we crave more than anything else in life. Paul knows this, so in I Corinthians 13, he dissects the common concept of love into its constituent parts to tell us why it is life’s greatest gift. Love is patient, he says. Love is kind, he says. Love is never envious or arrogant or boastful or rude, he says. But he saves the best for last. Love bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things endures all things. Love never ends. Most of all, love is so precious because it is immortal.

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