In Paul’s letter to the
Philippians, part of which was read this morning, Paul exhorts the people to be
ready for the day of Christ…as though that day was to be sometime in the
future. Well, today is the day of Christ. Jesus is here among us.
During Advent we often talk
about waiting for Jesus as though he hasn’t already appeared. Oh, I know it’s
tradition but something is amiss when 2000 years after the birth of Jesus, some
are still waiting for the fulfillment of the promises and some have waited
longer than others.
Unlike
the shepherds keeping their flocks in that field, or King Herod who laid awake
at night wondering what this child would mean to his kingdom, unlike the
innkeeper who had no idea who he denied a room to…we know the rest of the
story.
We
know who this child is and what his coming is supposed to mean to the world. We’re
not so confused as the shepherds, we know to reject Herod and his heirs, we’d
never tell Jesus there is no room in the inn.
We
heard him announce that he was sent to proclaim the Good News to the poor, to
free the prisoners, to restore the health of the sick and to end the oppression
being visited upon the most vulnerable.
Unlike
those who lived in the shadows without much hope 2000 years ago, we heard God
introduce Jesus with these words, “"Here is My
servant, whom I have chosen, My beloved, in whom My soul delights. I will put
My Spirit on Him, and He will proclaim justice to the nations.”
The Gospel of
Luke 3:1-6 tells a story about one person who was unwilling to wait any longer. It was the fifteenth
year of the reign of Emperor Tiberius. Pontius Pilate was governor of Judea,
Herod ruler of Galilee during the high priesthood of Caiaphas. Luke isn’t a
name dropper. Luke is setting the stage when he lists the names of those who
had reason to fear the coming of he who the rest of the world awaited.
Those names matter.
Herod had so much at stake if the promises of Jesus’s birth came to pass that
he ruthlessly killed every infant in the land hoping that one of them might be
Jesus because he so feared the coming of the kingdom of God and what that would
mean to his cruel and oppressive reign.
But, Jesus was not among
them. Like those refugees walking hundreds of miles to the US border to escape
the violence in their homelands, Jesus’s mother and father fled to Egypt where
they were afforded the radical hospitality God expects to be given to refugees and
the baby was saved from Herod’s sword.
30 years later, Pontius
Pilate found his place in history as the Roman who sentenced Jesus to die after
the fundamentalists of his day offered Jesus to be executed. Luke drops those
names as a way of telling us just what the times were like and why people were
awaiting a savior.
Along
comes a strange fellow, Jesus’s cousin John. As John begins his strange ministry, the paths
are crooked, the rough ways not smooth. Luke has jumped ahead of the Christmas
story here. Jesus is now 30 years old. All this time, he’s been working in his
father’s carpentry shop wondering what to do with his life. And along comes
John.
Maybe you had a
cousin like John, someone who made your parents nervous. Joseph and Mary
probably didn’t want their son to hang with Cousin John. Can you blame them.
Strange fellow stirring up trouble, hanging out down by the river, screaming at
people, saying crazy things about God, things you didn’t hear in the Temple. Mary
and Joseph attempted to redirect Jesus, taking him to the Temple to learn from
the priests. The 12-year-old Jesus ended up teaching them a thing or two.
Cousin John’s voice
is crying out in the wilderness. There is something about a voice that cries
out in the wilderness that attracts young revolutionaries like Jesus. You know
how Cathy stands up here every Sunday morning and says, “Welcome to Highlands.
May the peace of Christ be with you”? Well, John welcomed the crowd by calling
them a brood of vipers; yet for some reason the crowds grew, some serious about
what John had to say as opposed to what they were hearing in the faith
community in which they had grown up, some just curious, others wanting to know
what might come out of John’s mouth next.
What came out of
his mouth next were words quite different than anything they had heard before. When they asked, “What then should we do?” he asked them,
“Do you have two coats? Well, share with someone who has none; and do likewise
with that food you’ve been hoarding.” Even the dreaded tax collectors came
to be baptized, and they asked him, “Teacher, what should we do?”
“Stop
cheating the people, collect only what is due and stop trying to line your own
pockets.” The Roman soldiers had their own issues. They asked, “And we,
what should we do?” He said, “Quit being bullies. Your job is to protect and
defend the people, not to extort them.” All of this led the common folks to ask
whether he might be the Messiah.
No,
John said, but he is coming. While John waited, his preaching landed him in
Herod’s prison. There he awaited the executioner’s axe, pondering the suffering
of the oppressed, waiting for the justice Isaiah promised would come with the
kingdom of God. John got to wondering about his cousin. He sent messengers to
ask Jesus bluntly, “Are you the one we’ve been waiting for or should we keep
waiting?”
Those
same messengers are at the door of the church this morning. They wait outside
not knowing whether they will be welcome inside. “Are you the ones we’ve been
waiting for or should we keep waiting?”
They
want to know whether the church cares about them and the injustices of their
world. They’re waiting like good, little Advent celebrants. For them it’s not
about tradition. It’s about their lives and they want to know why they have to
wait so long for what others already have.
Candles
and hymns, sermons and calls to worship mean nothing to them. If those things
mattered, they’d fill these pews. Those walls would have to be rolled back and chairs
added. They want to know whether there is anything going on inside this church
that is relevant to their lives and the suffering they endure under the reign
of Herod’s successors.
Let
me be honest. I am saying these things because I need your help on this. We
have to figure out what is it that we have say to those who wonder why they are
still waiting outside?
2,018
years after Jesus was born, a lot of people are still waiting for justice. Refugees
wait at our border, prisons overflow with people waiting for reforms promised
by the politicians, the poor wait for a few crumbs to fall from the tables of
this wealthy nation to trickle down.
At
this Season of Advent, God has placed on my heart the especially long and
dangerous wait of our Transgender sisters and brothers. Their government, at
the urging of some of our fellow Christians, plans to define them out of
existence, churches tell them the God we ask them to believe in made a mistake
when they were created. They are told they’re not even worthy to die for their
country on foreign battlefields.
They
want others to believe that these human beings are somehow an aberration, a
flaw, a problem, a disease—rather than a marvel of God’s infinite world. And here we are, a More-Light
Presbyterian Church, the only one in Wyoming, claiming to proclaim the Good
News that God loves you and that we love you. Our website touts our values
statement assuring people that all are welcome here and will be safe and loved
among us. But, how would those who still wait know?
By
definition, silence cannot be heard. It can’t be heard by either the oppressed
or the oppressor. Silence makes the wait longer as the heirs to the Roman
Empire visit injustice on Transgender human beings. We don’t want to find
ourselves one day looking back on history like the elderly German woman
described by a preacher on a progressive Christian website I frequent.
A 60-something woman called me in tears. She remembered boxcars
crammed with desperate people passing through her German community and the
hollow-eyed horror etched onto the faces. She said, “Those people were Jews
headed for the camps, weren’t they? And we said nothing. We did nothing.”
Our
government and some of our fellow Christians are cramming new victims into
psychological boxcars. Not a one of us is too young to understand what is
happening.
Dr.
Ilan H. Meyer, a scholar at UCLA, expert on how stigma and prejudice and marginalization impacts the lives
of targeted people, says, “People are scared and they’re tired of being scared.” Being
scared causes some of God’s children to take their own lives, others to go into
hiding. Imagine the pain of
being told your government doesn’t want you to exist and that some churches are
hoping you’ll burn in hell.
Last August, the
governors of 16 states asked the Supreme Court to declare that Transgender
people have no employment protections under the law. Shamefully, our governor,
in our name, joined the effort to marginalize and legalize discrimination
against these our brothers and sisters.
Advent,
the wait for the birth of Jesus, was never supposed to be a time when any of
God’s people waited in fear of what was to come. Denying
dignity to Transgender individuals, has a devastating effect on their
well-being and self-worth as it diminishes God’s hope for the world.
These
brothers and sisters look out across the landscape and what they see in the
media are Christians teaming up with the government to ridicule them, deny them
basic human rights, and question the fundamental right every person has to know
that they are loved by God and they are asking the church, “Are you the ones
who follow Jesus or should we stay clear of you while we keep waiting?”
We
know that Highlands is different, but how would those who need to know know? I included a link in the Clan
this month and in this morning’s bulletin, to a Human Rights Campaign booklet. Take
time to read it. It contains information to arm you with the facts you need to
speak up and out for our Transgender brothers and sisters and it has practical,
real ideas about what we could be doing at Highlands.
During
our season of waiting, we at Highlands can’t quietly watch as others continue
to wait. Let us think and pray about how it is that these people who are
subjected to the indignities of a political and religious debate about how God
made them…how would they ever know that Highlands exists as a place where they
can be safe and loved.
While
others await the coming of the Christ child, let’s spend our time figuring out
how to let them know that at Highlands, their wait is over. The Jesus they are
awaiting is alive and well here, in this church, among these people. Can I get
a loud AMEN?
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