Love, a sermon based on Luke 1: 39-55 preached on December 22, 2024

After preaching a sermon the week before last on a long-awaited answered prayer, I’ve been moved by a couple members of our church who encouraged me to preach a follow-up sermon on the reality that God doesn’t always answer our prayers in the way that we want Him to. In fact, sometimes we pray, and then we need to brace ourselves for God’s answer to our prayers because God’s answer may shock us, require something from us, or force us to change in uncomfortable ways. On this fourth Sunday of the season of Advent as we light the candle of love, let us recognize that loving God and trusting God with our prayers is so much like any other loving relationship: To love God means that we change. It means that we let go of control. We trust His will, have faith, and all kinds of other uncomfortable things. This morning as we light the candle of love, brace yourself for love, for love hurts. Right? This morning in our second Scripture lesson, we turn to Mary, who, in the presence of Elizabeth, sang the song of an unwed, pregnant, teenage mother filled with joy, anticipation, and the knowledge that her whole life and the fate of this entire world was about to change, and so she sang: My soul magnifies the Lord. He has scattered the proud. He has brought down the powerful. He has lifted up the lowly. He has filled the hungry, and sent the rich away empty. What we’ve just read is one of the most beautiful and well-known passages of Scripture in the Bible. It’s been set to music and sung for thousands of years now. We call it the Magnificat. It’s the song of Mary, the mother of Jesus, whose soul magnified the Lord, and doing so required that she be willing to change everything. Think with me about Mary this morning. Mary, who was pregnant with the baby Jesus. While her song has been set to music for generations and sung in weddings and other such happy occasions, we don’t know to what tune Mary first sang these words, but if you’ve ever been in a situation anything like hers then you know that the tune to which she sang her song likely wasn’t the bright, happy tune of sappy Christmas music. I imagine that her melody was different because all the best love songs will lift your spirit but they might also break your heart. I googled “Best Love Songs of All Time,” and at the top of the list is, “I will always love you,” by Dolly Parton, which is so bittersweet a song that it will rip your guts out. Do you know that song? I’ll sing it for you. Hit it, Chohee… I’m just kidding. But listen to this. This is what Dolly sang in what’s considered to be the greatest love song of all time: If I should stay, I would only Be in your way So I’ll go, but I know I’ll think of you, each step of the way. And I will always love you When you think about the history of music and all the great music you’ve ever heard, isn’t it true that some of the music that we love best are the songs that help us put into words the strong feelings of our human hearts? Take the Blues, for example. Memphis, Tennessee claims to be the home of the Blues, yet the songs and the beats came up the river from the fields where enslaved men and women sang while they worked. Songs like: Nobody knows the trouble I’ve seen. Nobody knows my sorrow. Nobody knows the trouble I’ve seen. Nobody knows but Jesus. Think about Taylor Swift. One of her most well-known songs goes: “When you’re 15 and somebody tells you they love you, you’re gonna believe them.” She also sings of someone who is “so casually cruel in the name of being honest,” and, “Puttin’ someone first only works when you’re in their top five, and by the way, I’m going out tonight.” The best love songs put to words all the most complicated human emotions. The heartbreak and the joy. The excitement and the sorrow. And so when I ask you to imagine the tune to which Mary sang her song so long ago, this ancient song that came forth from her soul so many years ago, I ask you to think with me about the cost of loving someone and knowing that love is going to cost you something. That’s what she expressed. Was this child the long-awaited answer to her prayer? Yes. Had she, along with all her people, been praying for a savior? Absolutely. In fact, we know that so many hoped for a Messiah named Jesus that “Jesus” was the most common name given to boys at that time. We can imagine that there were so many named Jesus at the time that the Kindergarten teachers at the Bethlehem Elementary School had to call them by their first names and last initials. Surely, there was Jesus S. and Jesus T., and you all know Jesus of Nazareth. That’s a joke, but my point is an important one. Everyone was waiting for the Savior. Everyone was praying for the Savior. Mary grew up longing for the Messiah to come so that He would get the Roman soldiers out of her neighborhood, and her mother could finally come home from the market without being harassed. She longed for the Savior who would chase out the tax collectors who were shaking down her father for his profits. Everyone wanted the Messiah to come. Everyone was praying for His birth, maybe Mary especially, for she had this song ready to sing, the perfect one to sing at His coming, but did she expect to be His teenage mother? When she was already engaged to another man? When unwed pregnant women were stoned in her streets? My friends, we pray for miracles. We pray to God for help. Yet, do not think for a second that your answered prayers are going to be all gumdrops and marshmallow dreams. Do you know that song? It’s a marshmallow world in the winter When the snow come to cover the ground Dean Martin sang it, and it’s pure fluff, which is what so many of the songs that we sing this time of year are. Our theologian in residence, Dr. Brennan Breed, Old Testament scholar and professor at Columbia Theological Seminary, sent me a meme the other day that said, There are five types of Christmas songs: 1. Look, snow! 2. I want presents! 3. Santa is in love with my mom. 4. Pour me another drink! 5. The birth of Christ has ushered in a new age and no mortal shall taste eternal death. Mary’s song fits right into number five, but many in our world are singing about snow, presents, and mommy kissing Santa Clause, yet Mary didn’t know what her parents would say. She didn’t know what Joseph, the man to whom she was engaged, was going to say. She didn’t know how the gossips in the neighborhood would respond to this young, pregnant, unmarried woman walking through the streets. Surely, part of her was ready to hide or run away. Surely, there was a big part of her that was angry at God for calling her to play such a role. Why must I be the one to make a sacrifice? Why must I be the one to put my reputation on the line? And yet, she sang, From now on, generations will call me blessed. For the Mighty One has done great things for me, And holy is his name. That’s what Mary sang. Because there can be pain even with answered prayers, for there is sacrifice with every relationship. Why should our relationship with God be any different? A good friend of mine whom you probably know, Tom Clarke, when he met and fell in love with Marjorie, knew that being in a committed relationship with her would require him to give up his lifestyle as a bartender in Colorado. Do you know what it’s like to be a bartender in Colorado? It sounds like it was awesome. Tom lived in a cabin with a stream in the back that had trout in it, so he would flyfish during the day and bartend at night. What’s more, he had a horse, only he knew that in order to settle down with Marjorie, he’d have to give all that up. That was hard for him. It wasn’t easy to even consider the sacrifice, yet today, he can’t even remember that horse’s name because, while we must sacrifice for love, the gift we receive is far greater than the cost of what we’ve given up. Think with me about love. Love that requires sacrifice. Love that only the truly great song writers have ever been able to put into words. Love that hurts. Love that requires something of us. Love that lifts us up beyond where we are and who we are to transform us into someone new. That’s what Mary was singing about. My soul magnifies the Lord. God has scattered the proud in the thoughts of their hearts. He has brought down the powerful from their thrones and lifted up the lowly. My friends, your prayers, like love, require us to give up something, and when they do, I hope you’ll sing. And I hope you’ll sing with this church, just as Mary sang in the company of Elizabeth. Sing about those hard feelings. Sing about God’s grace. May the world be transformed by what God is doing in you. Amen.

Peace, a sermon based on Malachi 3: 1-4 and Luke 1: 67-80 preached on December 8, 2024

My friends, prayers may not be answered in the way that we expect them to be answered. Miracles may not arrive on our timetable, but may they always come in such a way that you recognize them and receive them with thanksgiving. That’s my introduction to the story of John the Baptist’s birth, which we are focused on this morning. Jesus said that among men there has been none greater than John, and yet he was just the opening act to the main event, so in these weeks leading up to Christmas Day, today our focus is the birth of John the Baptist, which, like the birth of our Savior, was miraculous. Like our daughters, Lily and Cece, John was a preacher’s kid. His father, Zechariah, was a priest at the Temple in Jerusalem; his mother, Elizabeth, born into a family of great priests, and the two had longed for a child. They had been waiting for years for a child to be born. In fact, it had been so long that, as they were getting on in years, Elizabeth and Zechariah had pretty much given up on ever being parents. You know how this works. Some of you know their struggle personally. You get married, and for the first few years, you don’t even think about it. “We’ll have kids at some point,” so many newlyweds assume. In the beginning, getting pregnant is something that scares you. No one walks into a relationship expecting to have any trouble conceiving, and we may imagine that it was this way for Elizabeth and Zechariah, yet by the time Zechariah the Priest was given the high honor of going into the Temple, they had already gone through all the steps. They had tried and tried. They had gotten their hopes up. After their hopes were dashed, they finally went and asked for help. Maybe Elizabeth finally opened up about it to her sister who already had three kids. Maybe they sought advice from a wise woman in town. Maybe they requested prayers from a priest or a ritual from a healer. Whatever it was that they tried, none of it had worked. Some here know how that can stress a marriage. Somehow, they stuck together; perhaps they stuck together by making peace with the bitter reality of their situation. That’s what people do. To survive, many people make peace with sad situations. They accept that not all dreams come true. We can’t know for sure, but we can safely assume that they had pretty much made peace with the reality that children would never come because when an angel of the Lord, Gabriel, appeared to Zechariah to say that Elizabeth was pregnant, he didn’t believe it. From Luke’s first chapter, the angel Gabriel said: Do not be afraid, Zechariah, for your payer has been heard. Your wife Elizabeth will bear you a son, and you will name him John. You will have joy and gladness, and many will rejoice at his birth, for he will be great in the sight of the Lord. With the spirit and power of Elijah he will go before the Messiah, to make ready a people prepared for the Lord. Can you imagine? Zechariah couldn’t. This morning, I invite you to think with me about why. Why would it be that a priest married to the daughter of a priest would not believe that their prayers had been answered, that their dream of a child would come true? Why would they make their peace with infertility? I imagine that it’s because, while they’d read the stories in the Bible of Abraham and Sarah who had a child in their old age, they’d also felt the pain of miscarriage. While they’d heard, and while Zechariah had even preached, that our prayers never go unanswered, they knew how bad it hurts to keep waiting with anticipation for something that never comes. This morning, as we light the candle of peace, I ask you to think with me about that word: peace. Sometimes, we make peace with disappointment and unanswered prayers. Sometimes, we make peace with disappointing realities that may never change. While we talk about peace, we also constantly read about war, and this unfortunate reality becomes such a part of our lives that we make peace, not with the promise that peace will come, but that it may never. Last week, maybe you read the story of the chef who was preparing food for the sick in a hospital in Palestine. He was targeted by a drone and was killed. We wait for peace, but we’ve grown used to war. Haven’t we? What else have we grown used to? At the recommendation of Jimmy Johnson, my wife, Sara, and I have been watching a new TV show on Netflix. It stars Ted Danson, who, in the show, has grown used to loneliness. The first episode begins with the toast he gave to his wife at their wedding: “I’ve found the one I want to grow old with” he says, but he has grown old, she died, and every morning, he wakes up on his side of the bed. He gets out of bed and makes just one cup of coffee. Then, he takes a walk by himself. He reads the paper by himself. He does the crossword with no one to ask for help when he gets stuck on 11 down or 17 across. After the crossword, he snips out interesting articles and sends them to his daughter, who doesn’t want to read the articles he sends her, but he sends them anyway because this is his only connection with another human being. Every night, after spending the day alone, he goes to sleep alone, anticipating the same lonesome existence to continue tomorrow. His wife died. The one he wanted to grow old with left him alone, and he’s made peace with his isolation. He’s made peace with that echo in the empty house. He’s made peace with his routine, even though there’s no brightness to it. He’s made peace, not with being alone, not with solitude, which can be good and healing and healthy, but with loneliness. Let us never make peace with loneliness. Loneliness will kill you, but yet, is it not easier sometimes to make peace with such hardship rather than get our hopes up for fear that our hopes will be dashed once again? Therefore, when the angel Gabriel said to Zechariah: Your prayer has been heard. Your wife Elizabeth will bear you a son, and you will name him John. You will have joy and gladness, and many will rejoice at his birth, for he will be great in the sight of the Lord, Zechariah couldn’t hear it. He wasn’t prepared for this news. He had made peace with the disappointment and wasn’t expecting his hopes to be fulfilled. Therefore, the angel said, “because you did not believe my words, which will be fulfilled in their time, you will become mute, unable to speak, until the day these things occur.” “Because you did not believe my words,” the angel said. Now, maybe a priest should be punished for not believing what an angel said, and yet, remember that priests and preachers come to doubt the miracles just as some of you may. When our prayers go unanswered, we are just as disappointed as anyone else. To make peace, though, with disappointment is a dangerous thing because prayers are answered all the time, and nothing is more tragic than an answered prayer that goes unrecognized. That’s the warning from the story of Zechariah. Make peace with your unanswered prayers so that your heart isn’t shattered, but don’t make such peace with your unanswered prayer that you miss the signs that God has heard you. What’s more tragic than an unnoticed miracle? I imagine such a thing just breaks God’s heart, and yet it happens. We get so fixated on the door that closed that we ignore the door that opened. What I’m talking about this morning is this strange reality of accepting disappointment, heartbreak, and isolation to such a degree that when salvation comes, we are too resigned to our dreadful lot that we can’t accept the invitation. It happens to the young: When their love goes unrequited, they become so fixated on the one who rejected them that they ignore the one who loves them in return. That happens. We have to learn to accept that not all our prayers are answered in the way that we expect them to be answered. Miracles may not arrive on our timetable, but may they always come in such a way that you recognize them and receive them. I once went to visit a woman who hadn’t been to church in weeks. She told me that no one from the church cared enough to call. No one knew her name. She’s been out, and not even the people who sit next to her have noticed that she’d been gone. As she was telling me all this, the phone rang. It was Gloria, who sits just across the aisle. “I was just calling because I’ve missed you and wanted to know how you were,” Gloria said to her. “I noticed you’ve been gone. Is everything OK?” I heard Gloria ask the woman these things because I was eavesdropping, and that’s the kind of nosy person I am, but I was so thankful for this miracle of caring in the church. This was the most obvious and tangible answer to the lonely woman’s prayer, and yet she said to Gloria, “Joe is over here. Thank you for calling, but I’ve got to go.” She hung up and then said, “Pastor, what was I saying? Oh, yes. No one in the church cares about me.” It's not that the reality she perceived was pure fantasy. It’s not that her sadness and disappointment wasn’t real. It’s not that her perception of the church was completely inaccurate. It’s just that situations change, people change, prayers are answered, and there are few tragedies greater than a miracle that falls in your lap yet goes ignored. There are few tragedies greater than the open door you missed walking through because you were still fixated on the door that closed. What is more discouraging than a priest who had made peace with his unanswered prayer in such a way that when the angel showed up to tell him that his prayers were answered, he didn’t believe it? My friends, heartbreak is real. Disappointment is real. There are sad realities in our broken world. If your hopes are getting dashed again and again and again, it is only natural to protect yourself by no longer getting your hopes up, but when an angel shows up in your life, I pray that you see him and that you believe what he has to say. A miracle is on its way to you. The King of Kings draws near to save us, but not everyone is going to see Him. Not everyone will have her head lifted in expectation. Some people will be so focused on their dreams dashed on the ground that they’ll only see the pieces of all their disappointment shattered across the floor, even while the King of Kings descends from the clouds from on high. Don’t stop waiting for peace. Don’t get so used to war that you begin to tolerate the bullets and the bloodshed, for hope is real. Peace is real. Christ is coming. And He’ll come in some place you least expect Him. Like a manger. Like as a child. Like as a miracle that those who walk by faith will see, and those who have become permanent residents of this broken world will miss. Don’t make peace with this broken world. Don’t treasure your shattered dreams. Get ready for the dawn of peace. Amen.

Hope, a sermon based no Jeremiah 31: 31-34 and Luke 21: 25-36, preached on December 1, 2024

There’s a history quiz that comes out every Saturday. My wife, Sara, does it first, and then I try to beat her score. Yesterday, she beat me pretty badly, and one that I missed was the year that Jane Fonda popularized the phrase “Feel the burn!” It was 1982. I won’t forget it again. In fact, I’ve been thinking a lot about that phrase, “Feel the burn.” It is an interesting one because it’s counterintuitive. When it comes to exercise, you want to feel that burn in your muscles. The burn means that the exercise is doing something. You’re getting stronger and more physically fit. You’re burning calories, losing weight, and toning your figure. To “feel the burn” is a good thing, and it was wise for Jane Fonda to point that out and celebrate that feeling because a newcomer to exercise might misinterpret that sign, thinking that the unpleasant feeling means that you should quit. In our second Scripture lesson, Jesus is doing essentially the same thing. He is helping us to understand the signs. We just read that: There will be signs in the sun, the moon, and the stars, and on the earth distress among the nations confused by the roaring of the sea and the waves. The nations will be confused because signs in the sun, the moon, and the stars sound like bad things. They’ll be confused by the roaring of the sea and the waves because most people think that a calm sea is good and that a roaring sea is bad. When it happens, some will faint from the fear and foreboding, but not you. “Do not fear,” Jesus says, “stand up and raise your heads” when these things begin to take place because these signs mean that your redemption is drawing near. Don’t misinterpret the signs. Don’t be afraid. Don’t panic, for fools misinterpret the signs to their own detriment. For example, my friend Tom Clarke works for a company that manages investments, and often, he must help clients understand that when the stock market slumps, that’s not the best time to sell. That’s when some people want to sell, however. When the market fluctuates, sometimes their clients will call the office nervous or afraid. They’ll say, “But I’m losing money. Get rid of those stocks! Make it stop before I lose more.” The calm response of the company is always the same: Don’t panic. “Wait,” they’ll say. “The market does this from time to time. Don’t be afraid. Let’s talk next week. Allow me to interpret what you’re seeing.” All that is good advice, and it’s not just good investment advice, although it is very good investment advice. In 2008, we owned two homes in Decatur, Georgia. We bought one before the bubble burst, then a second with plans to sell the first, only once the bottom fell out of the housing market, we could sell neither. Then, we moved to Tennessee and needed to sell them both. Unable to sell the two in Decatur for anything close to what we’d paid for them, we bought a third in Tennessee. That was a terrifying situation in which to be; however, do you have any idea what those homes would be worth today? My point is that in fear, sometimes we panic. We lose faith. We lose hope. We don’t make good decisions when we’re running around like chickens with our heads cut off. When we’re in such a panic, we just want to do something, even if it’s the wrong thing. Therefore, the best advice can be to wait. Don’t panic. Hold on. Fear not. Such advice isn’t just practical, it’s also faithful, so when you see the signs in the sun, the moon, and the stars, the roaring of the sea and the waves, while many people will faint from fear and foreboding of what is coming upon the world, don’t misinterpret the signs. Consider how the leaves change color. When the leaves change, no one responds as though the tree were dying, yet when the stocks go down, we rush to sell as though they’ll never go back up again, or when criticism comes our way, so many of us crumble. Don’t misinterpret the signs. Stocks fall then rise again, as leaves change their color. Likewise, criticism may feel like failure. It may feel like rejection. Yet, no one takes the time to criticize people who don’t matter. Don’t misinterpret the signs. Criticism is the sign that you matter, that you can be better, and yet, how many look at the scoreboard and quit before time has run out? The Yellow Jackets and the Bulldogs lasted how many overtimes? Eight overtimes. My friends, we lose when we quit. We lose when we panic. We lose when our hope runs out. We lose when we’ve misinterpreted the signs. Don’t misinterpret the signs. This old world will fall away to be replaced by a new heaven and a new earth. Don’t be weighed down by the worries of this life, for each step we take is one step closer to the gates of Heaven. All our pain is like pain of childbirth. It is not punishment, for from our struggle comes new life, a new life far better than what was before. I’m talking about hope here. As the waves roar and the heavens shake, get ready for the new thing. Go out into the world today expectant, for our best days are not behind us, but before us. Christ Jesus, who will come again, comes not to judge us or condemn us, but to set us free. Don’t misinterpret the signs. I’ve been watching this TV show about the world’s greatest soccer player. He left his hometown to play in Europe where he rose to celebrity status, only then, at the very height of his career, his heart began to trouble him. His doctors told him he could never play again, and so he returned to his hometown, this tiny Mexican village on the ocean, and he began to drink himself to death, believing that his life was over. My friends, he had misinterpreted the signs, for his best days were still ahead of him. Each day in this small town brings with it new life. He starts to grow and mature. While celebrity had given him fans, in his hometown, he discovered his family. While Europe had given him a mansion to live in, this village gave him a home. So it will be with us, so don’t misinterpret the signs. Do not be weighed down with the worries of this life. Hope. “The days are surely coming,” says the Lord, “when I will make a new covenant with the house of Israel. No longer shall they teach one another or say to each other, ‘Know the Lord,’ for they shall all know me, from the least of them to the greatest,” says the Lord, “for I will forgive their iniquity and remember their sin no more.” That’s the sign of what’s to come. Not condemnation, but salvation. Thanks be to God. Amen.