When the King Has Got Your Back

Paul was a pain in the rear end. Yes, I'm talking about the Apostle Paul. Yes, I'm talking about the Paul who is credited as the author of the book of Ephesians which we read this morning. Yes, I'm talking about the Paul who was knocked off his donkey by a blinding revelation of Jesus, who started churches all over Asia Minor and Greece, who wrote the letters that formed the nucleus of our New Testament. That Paul was a pain in the rear end. If you don't believe me just ask the other disciples. I mean, they had been with Jesus. They had travelled with Jesus. They had seen the arrest and the trial and the death and the resurrection. If anybody knew Jesus, they knew Jesus. Paul had not been there. In fact, Paul had been trained as a Pharisee. Paul had been standing by when Stephen, a deacon in the new Church, was stoned to death. Paul was holding the cloaks of the people throwing the stones. He was a coat clerk at the first Christian martyrdom. He persecuted Christians. Then he got converted and you know that there is nothing more annoying than a new convert. They think they know it all. They think nobody ever had an experience like theirs. And they want to tell you how you've got it wrong. Even if you're one of the original twelve disciples! That's what it was like with Paul. He was not from Jerusalem. He had been born up in what is now Turkey. A tentmaker by trade, but trained in the traditions of the Jewish law. Then he had that conversion experience on the Damascus Road and he suddenly saw something that the original group of disciples was having difficulty acknowledging. Paul could see that Jesus of Nazareth was not just a Jewish Messiah but the Savior of the whole world. If it was good news for the Jews it was also good news for the Greeks, the Romans, the Cretes, and the Gauls. It was a hard thing for good Jews to hear. Peter had to have a vision from heaven to tell him that it was OK to go baptize a Roman centurian named Cornelius and his family. But it was just obvious to Paul. So they finally had a conference in Jerusalem somewhere around 50 AD, some 17 years after Jesus' crucifixion. Paul met with Peter and James, the brother of Jesus, who had become a leader of the Jerusalem church. You can read about it in Acts chapter 15. The Jerusalem Council was tense. There were many Christians in Jerusalem who still believed that Jewish rites like circumcision would be required even for new converts. But Paul was convinced that God would not burden new Christians with unnecessary rules. In the end they agreed to endorse Paul's mission and they sent him out with some representatives from their group. Things were still tense though and about 8 years later Paul had to come back. Simon Montefiore describes the scene in his new book, Jerusalem: A Biography: By now James and the elders in Jerusalem disapproved of Paul. They had known the real Jesus, yet Paul insisted: "I have been crucified with Christ. The life I live now is not my life but the life Christ lives in me." He claimed, "I bear the marks of Jesus branded on my body." James, that respected holy man, accused him of rejecting Judaism. Even Paul could not ignore Jesus' own brother.* So he came back to Jerusalem and went to the Temple with James to pray as a Jew. In the process he created such an uproar that he was arrested. When he demanded a trial as a Roman citizen he was shipped off to Rome. There, according to tradition, he was executed. But what he did before dying was to open the door for all of us to follow. The Church that was born at Pentecost when the Holy Spirit came upon all those Jews gathered from all those nations would now go to all those nations with good news for everyone. I think it's kind of comforting to know that the early Church had its fights and conflicts, too. And I think it's kind of comforting to know that God can work through people like Paul, who was a pain in the rear end for the people around him. Paul could see what others had a hard time seeing - that Jesus was the King and that changed everything. We live with so many flawed kings and queens these days. We have always lived with so many flawed rulers. They are vulnerable to corruption, hopelessly weak or dangerously dictatorial, too enslaved to public opinion or too unmoved by it. We need our leaders to be the best we have to offer but they always turn out to be...human. So what was so compelling about Paul's vision of Jesus that made him such a pain? The passage from Ephesians gives us a glimpse. Verse 15 of chapter 1 says, and I'm reading from the New English translation here, "For this reason, because I have heard of your faith in the Lord Jesus and your love for all the saints, I do not cease to give thanks for you when I remember you in my prayers." Paul is writing to a community that has caught the vision, that has seen Jesus for who he was. Paul is giving thanks as he starts and he is encouraging this community. The next verse he starts laying out what he is praying for on behalf of these new Christians, "I pray that the God of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of glory, may give you spiritual wisdom and revelation in your growing knowledge of him, – since the eyes of your heart have been enlightened – so that you may know what is the hope of his calling, what is the wealth of his glorious inheritance in the saints, and what is the incomparable greatness of his power toward us who believe, as displayed in the exercise of his immense strength." So what is he saying here? He wants them to burn like he is burning. He wants them to get the big picture because it is so easy to get swallowed up in the day to day. He wants them to see with the "eyes of their heart" and not just with their physical eyes. Because you know what you see when you just look with your physical eyes? You see a world that is falling apart. You see life as a slow progression of loss and disintegration. You see disease winning. You see poverty winning. You see injustice winning. You see the powers and principalities getting a chokehold on our institutions. You see your bad habits and your addictions and your wounds and your failures and your sin beginning to define your life. And that is not the truth. What do we sing in that praise song, "Open the eyes of my heart, Lord, I want to see you." That's the prayer Paul has here for the Ephesians. He wants them to see a greater reality breaking into this one. There's more though. He goes on...and I hate to say it but Paul, in addition to being a pain is also a difficult writer to comprehend...he gets too excited and just starts piling on the clauses...but he goes on to say that he wants them to know "the hope of Jesus' calling" - that he wants them to know that their reality starts in Jesus' calling them to be a set apart people. They have a particular mission on earth and that is to be witnesses to hope. They are to be hope. So that's one thing he wants to remind them of. Secondly, he wants them to know "the wealth of his glorious inheritance in the saints." Christians aren't known for their great wealth in this world. Joel Osteen not withstanding, the primary witness to Christ is the message of sacrifice and service. Right living is the mark of the Christian. The wealth Paul is talking about is in the people - the saints - who have responded to Jesus' call and who are now living in the wealth of God's kingdom. The Crystal Cathedral in California, this great marvel of glass and architecture, was sold this week because the ministry that built it failed. This week we sent 127 shoeboxes with the good news of Jesus around the world and we distributed 267 bags of food to people in our community. I believe God appreciates beauty but when it is disconnected from the needs of the world, where is our true wealth. Paul wants us to see it ahead of us. Finally, Paul wants the Ephesians to know "the incomparable greatness of his power toward us who believe." They may be poor and persecuted. They may be on the margins of the society. But the Christians Paul was talking to, like us, should never believe that they have no power. If God could raise Jesus from the dead in this world, God can do greater things yet. So when we believe that all our good efforts have come to naught. When we believe that bad things will always happen to good people. When we believe that we can't make a difference or that things have always been this way and always will be. When we believe these things we make the mistake of believing we have no power. But God knows that King has got our back. Paul has talked about the past, present and future. He has talked about our calling in the past that has set us on a different journey. He has talked about the riches of the saints in glory who tell us about our destiny. And he has talked about the power that God exhibits in the here and now to be what God knows we can be. One thing great kings and queens can do is to inspire us to be like them. How else do you explain the thousands of Elvis impersonators in this world? Everybody wants to be the King. But King Jesus came to us in a very particular way. His life revealed that the way of kingship was through humility. The way of glory came through suffering. The way of community was through love. And only through death with a crown made of thorns on his head could he then take his place at the right hand of God. We are getting ready to enter a very special season of the year. In a lot of ways it's our season. The world is putting on bright lights and its shiny best because we have a message of light and life. The world is celebrating because we have told the world there is a reason to celebrate. But we will also be challenged. We will be challenged by the messages we hear to spend too much, to do too much, to eat too much, and to listen for God too little. Don't forget who you are. You were called by the King. You are meant for the King. And the King has got your back. Thanks be to God. *Simon Sebag Montefiore, Jerusalem: The Biography, [Alfred A. Knopf: New York, 2011], p. 212 (electronic edition)

Jesus is the Where to My Why

Today I want to clear up some misconceptions. I have come to believe that one of the reasons people have a hard time coming to grips with God is because God is not living up to their expectations. And when God is not the God that they expect God to be, they go back to the old gods. The door to salvation may be thrown wide open but we have a propensity for trying to pull it shut again.

You think that sounds strange, but I’m right about this! In the letter to the Ephesians which we read this morning, the writer says, “God chose us in Jesus before the foundation of the world to be holy and blameless in love. God chose us from before all time to be children of God for no good reason except the good pleasure of God’s will.” That sounds to me like God wants to throw the door wide open but to welcome people like you and me in.

But we can’t handle a God like this – a God who chooses us. Just who does this God think he is? This God of Ephesians sounds like a God of grace. You know what grace is? Unmerited love and acceptance. Love that comes our way even when we don’t deserve it and haven’t earned it. What kind of deal is that?

I run into people all the time who have rejected God and who don’t seek out the church because they assume that if God is really God and believes in justice that God will require them to be something different than they are in order to be accepted. God will require them to have their act together and to look perfect.

Or if God doesn’t require it, at least the church people will. Do you realize that there are people who won’t come to church because they think they have to dress a certain way or be of a certain economic class or have a spotless background? You might have had to overcome it yourself to get you in church. “Those people won’t accept me the way I am, so I’m not going to go.” Behind that is another notion: “If that’s the way God’s people act that must mean that God will not accept me the way that I am either.” Do you see how important this radical hospitality thing is?

So people will not come because they believe God is too strict and too judgmental to be able to handle who they are. And if they ever get passed all the obstacles to actually get to church and to hear Paul talking in Ephesians, they hear about this God who has chosen them from before the foundation of the world to find salvation and adoption through Jesus, and they say, “You’re not the God I rejected. So maybe you can’t be God at all.” Then they quote a little Groucho Marx who once resigned from a social club by saying, “I don’t want to belong to any club that will accept me for a member.”[i]

People will reject the good news because they can’t believe they would be worthy enough to receive it. They will also reject it because they can’t believe that God won’t let them earn a spot in heaven. I mean, God has the ultimate prize and just wants to give it away! What kind of parenting is that? How will the children ever learn to be responsible if the parent is willing to give them something for nothing? God is supposed to be a taskmaster, right? Making sure that we toe the line? Not giving us the time of day until we straighten up?

Once again, though, God doesn’t live up to our expectations. The God that Ephesians talks about is a God who talks about our salvation in the past tense, as if it had been won for us long before we were even born. “In Christ,” the book says, “we have already obtained an inheritance.”

Wait a second! We were accepted by God before we were even born? Where is the sense in that? Isn’t that a risky thing to do? God accepted me without the promise that I would return that love? Did God know I was going to turn out to be such a mess? Did God know that I was going to have so many quirks and flaws? Did God know that I was going to fail in so many ways to live up to my potential? And God obtained an inheritance for me anyway? I don’t know that I want to accept salvation by a God who would do such a foolish thing.

So God is not living up to our expectations that God be uncompromising and that he do a little means-testing to see if we’ve earned our way in. But there’s another way that God is not living up to the expectations that many people in our world have for God. God is too inclusive.

The popular image out there is that Christians believe that holding onto Jesus is a way of shutting out the rest of the world. They believe that when we say things like, “Jesus is the Way,” we are putting down other people. We are building a safe, little wall around our community. We are condemning non-believers. In particular, there are many people who believe that every time we profess our faith in Christ we are saying that people who believe differently cannot be loved by God.

It is a real stumbling block for a society that wants to believe that love and salvation are inclusive. There are many people for whom the first question they have is, “What about people of other faiths? What about Jews and Buddhists and Hindus and Muslims? Am I cutting myself off from the world by professing that Jesus is Lord?”

So this time the misconception is that God is so exclusive that God cannot love those who do not call upon Jesus. But the message of Ephesians is just the opposite. It is because God has come in Jesus that we know that God wants all of the world to recognize their adoption. Jesus did not come to condemn the world but that the world through him might be saved. The purpose of this whole Jesus business is to make clear the mystery. As Ephesians says, “God made known to us the mystery of his will according to his good pleasure which he set forth in him, unto the plan of the fullness of time to bring together all things in Christ – everything in the heavens and in the earth in him.”

God is bringing together all things in Christ. God’s not building walls. God is not standing around with a checklist to see whose names can be crossed off because they didn’t earn it. God is throwing open the door and it all becomes clear in Jesus. God is planning a great reunion and hoping that we will accept.

The creation knows what’s going on. The creeping things of the earth and the flying things of the air and the swimming things of the water – all the creatures of the earth know already who they are and they are just waiting for the humans to get it. “Maybe today,” the pelicans say as they fly along the coast. “Maybe today they’ll get it.”

“Maybe today,” the foxes say as they watch the lights in our houses in the dark of night. “Maybe today those humans will know who God really is and where this whole thing is headed.”

They know, I tell you. They know that God is not a sadistic ogre waiting for us to slip up but a lover who seeks us out to the ends of the earth. And, of course, God wants us to be “holy and blameless before God.” That’s part of what Ephesians says, too. But that is not a call to pride; it’s a call to being the people we were called to be. God does want us to do right and give up the things that keep us from God and to start growing in holiness, but that never stands in the way of God’s acceptance of us and pursuit of us. We can grow once we know that we are children.

I often think about my last year in seminary. Suzanne and I were living in a one-room efficiency apartment on the SMU campus in Dallas. Every night we had to move the sofa so we could pull the bed down out of the wall. That room was so small you could cook your breakfast while you were still sitting in the bed. And I did my studying at night in a closet so that I wouldn't keep Suzanne up. And we lived in the SMU apartments for four years.

That last year in seminary it all seemed to be coming together. I had just finished a year's internship in inner-city Dallas and I was coming back to school work with a purpose. I knew what I wanted to know and I jumped into my classes in a way I had never done before.

That year I was working in the seminary's audio-visual and copying department which was the perfect job for me. The A-V room was right on the main floor of the main building and it was sort of like the school's general store. Students and professors would stop by to chat and to have things run off. It was information central for anything going on on campus. And there was a lot of time, when the copier was running, when I could study. I usually came in to work with a ton of books.

Every afternoon Roberto would come by. Roberto was one of the custodians at the school and he only spoke Spanish, which was good for me because I needed to practice my Spanish, which was still pretty shaky, even though I had used it all through internship. It was also good because Roberto was a down-to-earth, even earthy kind of guy. He wasn't intimidated by this academic environment at all and I kind of got the feeling that he was often shaking his head in wonder at all the things we did.

So Roberto kept this fantastic year in perspective for me. It seemed like I always had my nose in a book when he came in. One day I remember he interrupted me to tell me a story. He was from a small town in Chihuahua, Mexico. He told this long story about a man in his village who was brilliant. He could speak and read seven different languages. He had the best library in the pueblo and he was always reading and thinking. Everyone in the town was in awe of him.

One day something happened. The man just snapped. All of a sudden he couldn't put a sentence together in any language. He spent his days wandering the streets raving like a madman. Having said that, Roberto left the room to continue his work. Who knows what his message was for me?

I didn't think too much more about that story. Fortunately my mind didn't snap then. Some folks say it's snapped since then, but I held it together through graduation. I graduated at the top of my class. There were several professors urging me to think about a PhD. It was all very heady stuff.

Beyond that I was beginning to think that I had it all figured out. There was a lot of mystery still about God, but I could talk about that mystery for a long time. I could define theological terms. I could tell you why I believed what I believed and who believed it before me and how I had improved what they'd believed. But I was headed for crisis.

That summer we stayed on campus while I did a unit of work as a chaplain at Presbyterian Hospital in Dallas. It's called Clinical Pastoral Education, or CPE, and it's required of all ministers in the Virginia Conference now. What it was for me was a good healthy dose of reality.

Suddenly I was dealing with people on a daily basis who didn't care a lick for the papers I'd written at school. I was dealing with patients who needed a listening ear and a hand to hold and a faith to guide them. I was dealing with people who struggled, not with Karl Barth and Martin Luther, but with pain and illness and tragedy. And I was also dealing with weekly seminars where my supervising chaplains and the others in my CPE group would challenge me on everything I did. They didn't allow me any screens to hide behind and they didn't care how well I wrote or what I'd read.

Well, let me tell you, it was devastating. I got into a major fight with the head chaplain at the hospital and we almost had a major incident at the hospital cafeteria one day. I felt more picked apart and threatened than I ever had in my life. I really wondered if I was cut out for the ministry business.

One day in July, about two months after I had started at the hospital, I came home to our spacious quarters in the afternoon and I could not shake this feeling of being put upon and torn apart. I paced the apartment from one end to the other, which was about like turning around in place, and finally decided I need to get out. I went to the track and ran several miles hoping to run some of the frustration and failure away. Finally I came back to the steps of the seminary chapel and sat down, still not feeling much better.

That was when Roberto stopped by. He saw me sitting there and he just stopped. Didn't say anything for a few minutes. I felt like he was studying me to see what kind of condition I was in. I must have looked like a mess. Not only was I hot and sweaty, but I'm sure there were bags under my eyes from the lack of sleep and a general droopiness and depression.

Then Roberto told me another story. It was a long story and for about five minutes he gave me the benefit of his wonderful, earthy wisdom. He gave me great detail in this story. But he was speaking in Spanish and I was too distraught to pay attention and I have no idea what he said. But you know what? It didn't matter. Because Roberto's face and his presence and his tone of voice said something even without the words and that is what touched me.

On that day Roberto reminded me of who I was. He reminded me really of who I had always been. He had tried to remind me once before, but I was too caught up in the swirling world of academia. He reminded me that I was human. Because I was human I was going to stumble and fall and make mistakes. I was going to run up against people and situations that seemed to threaten all the achievements I thought I'd made. But God could use me anyway, just as God has always used broken vessels and outright failures.

Don’t get me wrong. God doesn’t want us to be failures. There is a lot God wants us to do. But God knows a lot about picking up people who feel like they are nobody’s and making them somebody’s. God is not going to live down to our expectations. God is going to keep drawing us into the mystery and showing us that God’s intention is shown clearly in Christ. It all comes together in Christ. All our ‘whys’ are answered with one ‘where.’ In Christ, we find the life we’ve been missing. And the world needs to know it. Thanks be to God.

Ephesians 1:3-14

Blessed be the God and father of our Lord Jesus Christ, the one blessing us in every spiritual blessing in heaven in Christ, just as he chose us in him before the foundation of the world to be ourselves holy and blameless before him in love, predestining us into childship through Jesus Christ unto him according to the good pleasure of his will, unto the praise of the glory of his grace with which he graced us in the Beloved.

In this one we have redemption through his blood, forgiveness of trespasses according to the wealth of his grace which he poured out in abundance on us in every wisdom and understanding. God made known to us the mystery of his will according to his good pleasure which he set forth in him, unto the plan of the fullness of time to bring together all things in Christ – everything in the heavens and in the earth in him.

In Christ we have also obtained an inheritance, having been destined according to the purpose of him who accomplishes all things according to his counsel and will, so that we, who were the first to set our hope on Christ, might live for the praise of his glory. In him you also, when you had heard the word of truth, the gospel of your salvation, and had believed in him, were marked with the seal of the promised Holy Spirit; this is the pledge of our inheritance toward redemption as God's own people, to the praise of his glory.

---

[i] http://www.16-9.dk/2007-02/side11_inenglish.htm.

Where Do I Look for Light?

O.K., we have to start with some straight talk about Epiphany. January 6 (and the Sunday before it) is a day that the Church has set aside to recognize the revelation of the light of God in human flesh. The word Epiphany means “manifestation” and it is an ancient Christian festival that now marks the end of the Christmas season.

Why January 6th? There was an old pagan winter solstice celebration on that date in Egypt and the new Christians may have been trying to claim that day to tell a new message. Just as the solstice marks the time when the light begins to grow again and the days get longer, so Christians want to say that Jesus came into the darkness of the world and began to bring new light.

Over time Epiphany began to be associated with the visit of the magi to worship Jesus. Now here’s where we need to clear up some misconceptions. First of all, I called them magi. In tradition, over time, we started calling them kings. We even gave them names – Caspar, Melchior, and Balthazar. But we don’t know how many there were or what their names really were. The word ‘magi’ tells us they were astrologers, probably followers of some Mesopotamian religion that searched the stars for signs. We like to put them in the manger scene on Christmas, but Luke is the one who tells about the manger and he doesn’t mention the magi. Matthew is the one who tells us about them and he says they came to the house where Mary and Joseph and the baby lived, so they could have come much later.

We like to put them in the manger, though, because it is important that we get the witnesses right. And we are fascinated by these exotic figures that travel from the East following a star to the place where Jesus was born. We are fascinated, but they must have been a surprise and a disturbance to the faithful Jews of Jesus’ day. Foreigners? Bringing gifts to a new-born child?

Not that the rest of the Christmas story wasn’t surprising. A young virgin giving birth to the son of God…now that’s something you don’t see every day! A host of angels bringing heavenly messages. A bunch of shepherds bearing witness! All of those things were surprising, sure, but the Jews of the day would have some way of understanding them and why God might use them. A young girl giving birth to a divinely-promised son? Why that had happened to old Sarah and Rebecca and Hannah in the Hebrew Scriptures. Angels bringing messages from heaven? That was a great part of Jewish tradition dating back to Sodom and Gomorrah and Jacob’s ladder. And shepherds? Well, they weren’t the most respected people in the community, but great King David – the greatest king in Israel’s history – he had started out as a shepherd.

All of these folks were surprising, but they were still within the fold – still part of God’s people. But these wise men – studying the stars and signs, offering gifts from far-off lands – where did they come from? They wandered in off of somebody else’s story! They certainly weren’t Jewish. What could God be doing by bringing foreigners to worship the savior of Israel? What’s going on here?

So here’s the rub – Christmas for us is a celebration of the incarnation of God in Christ, but it was also a crisis in how we understand God. For the early Church it was something that caused great splits and divisions. It still gnaws at us today. What did God mean by doing something so scandalous as throwing the doors open to other nations – Gentiles as the Jews called them?

The question is: If the good news of salvation is suddenly opened to all people – not just the Jews – by the coming of Jesus – what does that say about God? Did God intend this from all time and only make it plain in Jesus – or did God change God’s mind about being Israel’s God and Israel’s alone? Or is the God of Jesus another God altogether?

The early Church fought about this a lot. The wise men couldn’t be ignored. They made clear that Jesus was not just a local hero. He was someone of universal importance. So for the Jews and the new Christians the question was – what do we do with all these foreigners?

There was no question that the Christian movement had Jewish roots. Jesus taught in the synagogue and the Temple. He was circumcised according to Jewish Law. He was presented at the Temple with a sacrifice. He studied under Jewish religious leaders.

The new Christians began meeting as part of the Jewish synagogues, but they found themselves faced with the same hostility Jesus found to his teaching. Soon they were meeting separately.

At the same time the apostles were finding a great response among the Gentiles. So a great conference was held in Jerusalem to decide if the new converts had to become Jewish in addition to accepting Christ. The conference is recorded in the book of Acts, chapter 15 and the answer they determined upon was: “No – the Gentiles should be welcomed without restriction.” As Peter put it, “Why are you putting God to the test by placing on the neck of the disciples a yoke that neither our ancestors nor we have been able to bear?” [Acts 15:10]. It was grace through Jesus that would save people – not Jewish customs.

Obviously the Church did expand beyond Israel. It continued to grow among Gentiles and eventually they began to ask why they needed to keep any of their Jewish heritage. If Jesus changed things so radically, why do we hold on to the Old Testament? In the 2nd century folks like Marcion decided that what was in the Old Testament was the revelation of a different God altogether. So he made his own collection of Scriptures. He took Luke and ten letters of Paul and started a new movement.

The Church rejected Marcion and his interpretation. We believe that there is only one God who was revealed to Israel and through Jesus. We believe this because of passages like the one we find in our Ephesians reading today. Paul was trying to answer the questions of the Ephesian Christians and he gets to this passage and it all comes out of him in this tumble of words that can be rather confusing. In the Greek it’s all one run-on sentence, but here’s a rough translation.

Paul says, “Look, you Gentiles, this whole change has taken about for your sake. It looks like heresy to the Jews because it is so different, but it is for your sake and theirs that Christ came. It’s a mystery why God chose to do it this way. It’s a mystery earlier people weren’t given to understand, but now the Holy Spirit has come to give new understanding to apostles and prophets like me. And because it comes you can be reconciled to God through Christ.

“God had it planned from the beginning and it has always been available. It’s not really new at all. But Jesus makes it clear and because of him we all have access to this mysterious God.”

Jesus makes it clear. He came to tear down walls, not to build new ones. The same God who created us is the God who saves us. And the unapproachable, unknowable God has become approachable and knowable through the baby of Bethlehem’s manger worshipped by Gentile wise men.

Maybe we think the wise men aren’t as surprising to us as they were to the faithful Jews of Jesus’ day. We’ve been seeing them in their bathrobes in our Christmas pageants for so long that we think they are as natural as the stars in the sky. We say to ourselves, “Of course the gospel is available to everyone. Of course, they should be there.”

There are ways, however, that we close the doors to those who are seeking. We are still building walls. We are still keeping the wise men out.

How do we do it? When we forget that the Church does not exist for itself but for those who are not here, then we are keeping the magi out. When we use obscure language to talk about our faith and do not explain it, we alienate those who want to know what it is that we are talking about. When we use language like ‘we’ like I’m doing right now and assume that we’re all on the inside instead of recognizing that many of us, even in this sanctuary are still seeking, then we are keeping the magi out.

There is a video making the rounds on the internet these days that imagines what Starbucks would be like if it marketed itself like the church does. In the video a couple comes to Starbucks for the first time and is bewildered by what they fine. They have to drive past parking spaces reserved for the manager and assistant manager in order to find a place to park. They are bewildered by the insider coffee language that the store clerks use. There is a long list of announcements about things they know nothing about that they have to sit through before they can order their coffee. You can see the parallels.

Here’s what I believe and I believe it because I have walked with people who have been seeking God for a long time. I’ve seen it at Taize in France where young people from all over the world come to sing chants and sit in silence to pray – not because they have bought the whole “Christian thing” but because they suspect there may still be some power worth exploring. I’ve seen it on mission trips when disillusioned people with very little connection to God suddenly discover that they have been claimed just because they made themselves available to serve others. I saw it on Christmas Eve as people made their way here – some because they had come here often but some because something called them back to church or called them for the first time.

What God shows us in Jesus is that there is a great openness in the heart of God that is large enough to welcome every soul. What Jesus shows us in laying his life out on the cross is that God will go to death itself to find a way to bring us home. What the broken bread of the communion table shows us is that it is precisely as walls are broken down that the path to life becomes clear.

What the magi show us is that people, all people, are still searching for hope and salvation and light in the midst of the darkness. And when they find it they are willing to place their best, their treasure, their very lives at its service. Hope. Salvation. Life. We know all these things in Jesus – the baby in the manger who came to save the world. What are you holding back to give? And who are you holding back from seeing what Jesus means to you? Thanks be to God.

Ephesians 3:1-12
For this reason, I, Paul, the prisoner of Christ Jesus on your behalf, you Gentiles – for surely you have heard of the management of God’s grace which was given to me for you, because the mystery was made known to me by revelation, just as I wrote above in a few words, in accordance with which you will be able, upon reading, to perceive my grounding in the mystery of Christ, which was not made known to the children of humanity in another time, but now has been revealed to his holy apostles and prophets in the Spirit. So that the Gentiles may be fellow heirs and members of the same body and sharers in the promise in Christ Jesus through the gospel of which I have been made a servant according to the gift of God’s grace given me by the working of his power.
To me! The least of all the saints! This grace was given to me to bring the Gentiles the good news of the unfathomable richness of Christ and to enlighten everyone as to what is the plan of the mystery which has been hidden for ages in God by whom all things were created. Now it comes forth that it might be made known to the rulers and authorities in heaven through the Church – the Church being the multifaceted wisdom of God. Now it comes forth according to the eternal plan which he has carried out in Christ Jesus our Lord, in whom we have courage and trust to approach God by faith.