December 18, 2016 - Fourth Sunday in Advent - Down-To-Earth Sermon & a Cheesecake Social

What authenticates our vision of God?  Are we likely to be swayed more by wisdom, signs, community perceptions, dreams or some other form of revelation? 

Today we considered the birth and identity of Jesus in our current Christian community.

Pastor Michelle's sermon focused on humanizing the revelation to Joseph of the birth of Jesus rather than the "familiar, cozy Christmas stable".  Matthew relates Joseph's dream about Mary after he decided to quietly divorce her.  What is usually not focused on is what Pastor Michelle termed the "down-to-earth perspective" of this gospel and  Jesus' questionable genealogy that immediately precedes today's gospel. His lineage was not exclusively filled with saints, prophets, or a spiritual crème de la crème.

Excerpt from today's sermon:

Matthew does flesh out the incarnation to give us a glimpse of the very real struggle Joseph and Mary went through in trying to be faithful to God. Today I want to take a closer look at this personal aspect of the story, because for the past two thousand years it seems the church has glossed over or sanitized much of the humanity and heartbreak Joseph and Mary must have experienced   

Pastor Michelle's words make me ask questions.  Imagining myself as Joseph, I would know there were two socially acceptable ways to deal with an engagement to a woman who is pregnant. Could I follow a third option on the strength of a message given to me in a dream?  What if my dream were instead the message God gave Abraham about Isaac?  Or God gave to Noah abut the flood?

I know acting on something that came to me in a dream or through an extraordinary message is not my strength.  All it would take is a couple of friends telling me I am crazy to act in a certain way because it came to me in an extraordinary way and I would doubt myself.

I like Pastor Michelle's label "glossed over" in the above sermon excerpt even more than sanitized.  Certainly generations before ours appeared to need  to make things look "right", not to mention the simplified versions of Bible stories we rightly tell children to shelter them from what is questionable behavior.  Unfortunately this "glossed over" gospel does not speak to many of us in the same way that it spoke to Christians of the past.  When we share a "glossed over" gospel there can be a numbing repetition and a "yesterday's news" quality that permeates the story and the characters become otherworldly, pious cutouts with no dimension.

Pastor Michelle gave another sermon (December 4) that links to this idea where she said the church cannot afford to be a non-prophet organization.  This part of the church's work can be uncomfortable, scary. and life changing.  Phyllis Tickle wrote about the church going through a garage sale of former beliefs every 500 years.  A more comfortable way of saying the same thing but discarding a belief is very different than parting with an old lamp or other possession. 

Yet I already see this at Creator.  At an Adult forum a few years back there was not a single participant who believed in the penal substitution theory of atonement, namely that Jesus died as a substitute for sinners, bearing the punishment that mankind deserved. Supposedly this is expressed in the Bible in passages such as 'He himself bore our sins in his body on the tree, that we might die to sin and live to righteousness,'[1 Pet. 2:24] and 'For Christ also died for sins once for all, the righteous for the unrighteous, that he might bring us to God.'[1 Pet. 3:18].

There are other ways of reading passages like the above that can be enlightening but are beyond the scope of this blog.  What is important to me is how this understanding of Jesus has changed from when I was a young man.  Then everyone I attended church with believed more or less in the substitution theory of atonement.  Not to believe that they interpreted as not being truly Christian.  I know there are many who still believe this.  I just find myself extraordinarily thankful to be in a community that, on the whole, is more sympathetic and in tune to Peter Abelard's theory of atonement.

At Creator we are growing in our relationships with each other and with God. Personally I felt this in a very direct way last week when my wife and I ended up stranded on an icy hill when the snow came quickly on Wednesday evening.  Mary became worried about being stranded for hours without the insulin she now must take on a regular basis.  We called AAA first, then On Star, towing, taxi services, and even 911 for help. No one could help or suggest an effective course of action until we called Toni who gave us Tom's number. He reached us and drove us home using his four wheel drive.

There was a gratefulness and trust built last Wednesday evening because of Tom and Toni. There are many back stories like this in my past I think about many Sundays when I encounter the individuals gathered and those from the past as well.

Let me offer a celebratory close that is in keeping with my last observation.  After service, we enjoyed our community life and our Sunday together with a Cheesecake Social.  Delicious desserts were provided by Greg, the owner of Swirl Cheesecake (with the photo here by Jason).

I only wish there was a way of sharing the taste with everyone besides Creator's big thumbs up.