Well, folks… the Lab Staff are kind of going out with a whimper instead of a bang for 2022. John has acquired an RSV infection (thankful not to be COVID) and Delmer is not the technical whiz of the operation. Therefore, in lieu of a year-end podcast that we had hoped to produce, we offer Delmer’s excellent musings for preaching through the brief Christmas season, whatever services that may include for you. Hope to be with you live in the new year — peace from the Bubbas!

A Few Homiletical Thoughts for Christmas and the First Sunday After (i.e. New Year’s)

Proper I Texts: Isaiah 9:2-7; Psalm 96; Titus 2:11-114; Luke 2:1-20

Isaiah gives us some sharp images of before and after the coming of the Lord: darkness and light (9:2), a burden is lifted/broken (9:4), an oppressive enemy if defeated(9:3,5).

How does this happen? A Son of David (King? Messiah?) has been born who will do marvelous things for us (9:6-7). And how does the earth respond? With rejoicing! (9:3)

“Joy To the World” indeed!

Psalm 96 is a psalm celebrate the “divine kingship.” This is not “The king is God” but rather “God is our true king.” Lots of action verbs inviting us how to respond to the king: sing (1-2)

declare (3), praise (4), ascribe (7-8), worship (9), say (10) because the Lord is coming with righteousness (13). “Go Tell It on the Mountain and Everywhere!”

Titus provides a one line definition of what has happened with the coming of the Christ, “For the grace of God has appeared, bringing salvation to all.” (11) It also invites us to await the “coming again,” with both patience “hope” (13) and “good deeds” (14). Not a bad way to celebrate Christmas.

Luke tells us the Christmas story - the one we’re all familiar with, the one that forms the plot of thousands of Christmas pageants and Hallmark card poems. I’ve preached for forty-five years, which means forty-five Christmas Eve’s and I have looked at this story from every angle I could think of, including the non-existent innkeeper and an imaginary sheep, donkey, cow, and camel. I finally learned that this is not a night for explanation, but for proclamation.

Luke 2:19 says, “But Mary treasured all these words and pondered them in our heart.” This story invites us to ponder what it means for God to come in the form of a baby and live in our midst, born in humble circumstances, with his first witnesses being real nobodies that no one trusted or believed. To hear the birth of Christ is to ponder what it might mean for us this year, in this time, in this place, among these specific people. “What Child is this?” and what am I supposed to do about it?

First Sunday After Christmas/The Holy Name of Our Lord/New Year’s Day

Christmas I Texts: Isaiah 63:7-9; Psalm 148; Hebrews 2:10-18; Matthew 2:13-23

The Revised Common Lectionary gives three sets of texts for today, as noted in my heading. It is a smorgasbord of liturgical/homiletical options. I am keeping it simple and going with First Sunday after Christmas, and narrowing even further by only talking about the Gospel reading - “The Flight into Egypt.”

In Chapter Two, Matthew’s tells four stories about Jesus as a child. These stories all serve to answer one basic question: Who is/was Jesus? We will read the first story, verses 1-12, on Epiphany, it is the story of the Magi and serves to show that Jesus has come not only to the Jews but to all peoples. We begin today with the second story, the flight into Egypt, today verses 13-15. This story serves two purposes. 1) It reminds us that Jesus was not a child of prosperity and power, but quite the opposite, a refugee, fleeing to a foreign land with nothing but the clothes on his back, like those thousands gathered at our southern borders. 2) it served as fulfillment of Hebrew scripture - Hosea 11:1 “Out of Egypt I have called my Son.” The third story is the slaughter of the innocents(16-18)tied with the escape into Egypt serves to tie the story of Jesus to the story of Moses, who was also rescued from a threatened and bloodthirsty tyrant. The fourth story also has echoes of the Israelites in ancient Egypt, for the Joseph then, and the Joseph in the gospels are both interpreters of dreams from God. It also serves to explain how Jesus born in Bethlehem became Jesus of Nazareth.

Our proclamation on this day might best be an exploration of the profound uncertainty and unpredictability of life - at least as seen from the human side. A savior comes, then the savior has to flee. A child is born, a son given, then hundreds of boy children are slaughtered. Israel receives a Messiah - who is promptly driven out of the country. It is only with the eyes of faith that we are able, in the midst of inexplicable evil and disappointment, to cling to the hope and the promise of God’s constant presence, Emmanuel, “God with us,” that we receive in the gift of God in Christ.

A Christmas Sermon by Dr. Delmer L. Chilton

Christmas/Nativity of Our Lord December 24/25, 2022

Texts: Isaiah 9:2-7, Psalm 96, Titus 2:11-14, Luke 2:1-20

My father Lowell was born in 1923 and grew up poor on a small tobacco farm in the foothills of North Carolina. The family was small - just Lowell and his older sister and their parents. They had lots of cousins and most of Lowell’s clothes were hand-me-downs. Like almost all the men they knew, Lowell and his Papa wore bib overalls all the time - even on Sunday to church, their newest clean pair with a white shirt and tie and maybe a old but neat suit coat.

For most of the boys Lowell knew and went to school and church with, this was fine. But not for Lowell - my grandmother told me that even as a little fella he longed to wear nice clothes. She subscribed to several news magazines and little Lowell would pore over them, looking at the men’s clothing ads - dreaming of owning a nice suit, wing-tip leather shoes, and a snappy gray fedora.

One year in mid December, when Lowell was about ten years old, his father took a wagon-load of tobacco to the town of Mount Airy to sell. He also had a list of groceries and other things to buy. Papa was a kind man and usually bought a few extra “surprises” for his children on these rare trips to town - a bag of candy or a toy.

The next morning, Lowell sat on the porch and watched for his father’s wagon to come down the old dirt road . When he spotted it, he and the dog ran to meet it. Papa waved and smiled as Lowell trotted along side the wagon and when little Lowell said, “Did you bring me anything?” Papa grinned and said, “Sure did. I bought you a suit of clothes for Christmas.”

Little Lowell stopped in his tracks, he was so happy and stunned. For the next two weeks he thought of little else. “A suit! I hope he got me some shoes to go with it. I’ll be the best dressed boy at church, that’s for sure.” He imagined everyone turning and looking at him admiringly as he walked down the aisle to his seat. He could not sleep on Christmas Eve, darting from his bed into the living room and tearing into his gift at the first break of dawn. Papa and Mama sat on the sofa, smiling as they watched their little boy’s excitement. Their smiles turned to puzzled frowns as Lowell opened his gift, stared at it a moment, then burst into tears, running from the room.

When grown-up Lowell told me that story, he would get to that point and then shake his head a bit with a wistful look in his eye. “Papa didn’t mean no harm telling me he had bought me a suit of clothes. It was just a little joke, a play on words. In the package was a brand new pair of bib overalls, with a matching denim work jacket. “A suit of clothes”. And here’s the thing - if Papa hadn’t said he had bought me a suit, I would have been perfectly happy with the new overalls and coat. But, I had gotten so worked up over the suit, it took me a while to be grateful.”

The proclamation the church makes this day is simple and consistent, clearly defined by Titus, who says that in the baby born in Bethlehem - “the grace of God has appeared.” (Titus 2:11) Year after year, decade after decade, century after century, the message is the same, “…to you is born this day in the city of David a Savior, who is the Messiah, the Lord.” Luke 2:11

The story has always been the same - but the response of those who hear it has consistently been all over the place. Some respond with belief, others with rejection, most with benign indifference. Why is this? Why do some, like the shepherds, fall on their knees in wonder and praise, while others, like King Herod and his minions, react with disgust and occasional violence?

How we respond to the gift of God’s grace, the baby in the manger, the appearance of the Messiah, the Savior, in the little town of Bethlehem, is dependent upon what we were expecting. If like little Lowell, we were looking for something other than what God’s has given us, we will always and forever be somewhat disappointed.

In Jesus’ day, most were looking for a different sort of Messiah - someone flashier, more physically intimidating, more militant, more something. And they couldn’t get their mind around the person of Jesus - neither the baby born in such an humble time and place, nor the grown up Jesus- a carpenter’s son from a nowhere town who liked to hang out with fishermen, and shepherds, and tax collectors, and women of questionable character. He wasn’t what they were expecting, and most of them ended up walking away from him in the end, as he died upon a cross.

Still today, we have certain images and expectations of Jesus in our hearts and minds. Many of these are variations of the names recited by Isaiah in chapter 9 - “Wonderful Counselor, Mighty God, Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace.” And if we live long enough, we will sometimes feels as though God has failed us. Christ will have not lived up to our expectations, and we will be like little Lowell - sitting in front of the Christmas tree of life, weeping in our confusion and disappointment. It is in those moments that we must listen most closely to the voice of the shepherds’ visitor in the night, “But the angel said to them, ‘Do not be afraid; for see - I am bringing you Good News of great joy for all people…’”

This Christmas 2022, do not be afraid. Christ has come, Christ is here, Christ will come again. There are a lot of bad things in the world that can make us wonder if God in Christ is real, if God in Christ cares, if God in Christ came and is still here. The key is to realize that God in Christ comes to us not in the form of what we want, but rather in the form of what God knows we need.

We want power over the things that frighten us; God gives us the strength to endure.
We want the knowledge to control the world and all that is in it; God gives us the wisdom to know that things don’t matter except as they are used to serve others.
We want to be loved and admired; God gives us soft eyes and gentle hearts so that we may be able to see others as lovable, and care for them as God’s beloved children.
We want a mighty savior to take care of us, God gives us a tiny baby so that we will to learn to look after one another.

It is unlikely we will get from God all that we desire.

It is equally certain that we will receive from the divine hand all that we need and more. “Glory to God in the highest!” Amen and amen.

For the First Sunday after Christmas

First Sunday after Christmas, January 1, 2023

Isaiah 63:7-9; Psalm 148; Hebrews 2:10-18;Matthew 2:13-23

A few years ago I was sorting our household accumulation of children’s videos and DVDs into live action or animate, and modern stories or fairy tales and I gradually realized how many fairy tales and children’s stories have as a basic theme an evil ruler threatened by a special child. A child who must be protected and/or rescued by agents of good. Think “Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs” and “Sleeping Beauty” and a host of others.

This sort of story was not unknown to the people Matthew was writing his gospel for – only to them it was not a children’s story or a fairy tale – it was both their history and their religion. Matthew taps into Hebrew people’s collective memory and story for images of Moses and Egypt and the Joseph of “the coat of many colors” and of exile and a mother’s anguish to tell his story of the birth of the Messiah and its violent aftermath.

The story Matthew tells is both very simple and very rich. The simple part goes like this –

Jesus is born, Joseph has a dream in which an angel tells him that Herod is out to kill the child, so Joseph bundles up his wife and his newborn and hustles off to Egypt to hide out. Meanwhile, Herod proves to be as evil as expected and because he cannot discover which child born in Bethlehem is the new “king,” he decides to kill them all in order to be sure to kill the one. After a while, the evil king dies, Joseph hears of it in another dream, moves his family back, but because the evil Herod’s equally evil but profoundly more stupid son is now the king, he joins the witness protection program and moves his family to the small town of Nazareth, in another place up north that is governed by someone else. Pretty straight forward, right?

Ah, but the richness is in the details. Matthew’s underlying theme is that Jesus is the Messiah and as the Messiah, he is the new Moses, bringing a renewal of God’s covenant that is both new and old at the same time – and the oldness is emphasized by the connections Matthew draws between the story of this baby Jesus and the story of both Moses and the entire people of Israel.

For example – Egypt is not only a place from which the people had to escape – it is also a place where they went for refuge and rescue. Remember Joseph of the coat of many colors and how after his brothers tried to kill him and he eventually became the Prime Minister, then there was a famine back in the homeland and his family had to go to Egypt in order to survive and God had placed Joseph there so that things would be ready. Joseph forgives his brothers for their murderous intent by saying “You meant it for evil, but God used it for good.”

It was also in Egypt that “a pharaoh who knew not Joseph” arose and who not only put the Hebrew people into slavery but also planned to kill all Hebrew male children. Moses was born and was not killed and was hidden in a little watertight basket along the river, etc. A threatened ruler with murderous intent, rescue and protection of the innocent by the good and the pure: Joseph the righteous bundles up Jesus and Mary and takes them to Egypt until the danger is over.

Back in Bethlehem, Herod carries out his plot and has the children slaughtered. Though there is no external historical record of this event – it is not hard to believe that this Herod did it. This is a man who murdered his own wife when he thought she was going behind his back and plotting against him and as he himself neared death, he gave orders that most of the leading male citizens of Jericho should be killed when he died so that there would be crying at his funeral. (Tom Wright, Matthew for Everyone, p. 14) Rachel was the favorite wife of Jacob/Israel and in the reference to “Rachel weeping for her children” from Jeremiah, she is being used as a symbol and her children are the Hebrews carried off to exile in Babylon in 597 BC. Matthew is tying this moment of Herod’s cruelty to all the many moments of loss and despair that God’s people have suffered and at the same time reminding us that in the midst of this God is acting to save.

Finally, the move to Nazareth is both an explanation (why is Jesus born in Bethlehem but comes out of Nazareth as an adult) and another Messiah allusion. “Nazir” means either “root,” “stump,” or “branch” in Hebrew – and Matthew uses it to refer to Isaiah 11:1 “a branch shall spring forth from the stump of Jesse.” Matthew makes a creative leap to connect Nazarene and Messiah and Jesus.

The first question today is this: Where does all this leave all of us on this First Sunday after Christmas? Those are very interesting facts and suppositions, but what difference does any of it make, really?

Well – there is this. Life is no fairy tale or children’s story – life is serious business. Not solemn, but definitely serious. The Bible reflects this seriousness. There is both good and bad around us and in us, in each of us. People are born and die; some soon after birth, others as children, some as young adults or in middle age, most later – some die naturally and well; others quite unexpectedly or cruelly or badly.

And the good news is that God has not abandoned God’s people to their fate. God has not created this mess and then left us to our own devices. The story the Bible tells, a story we hold to be true, is that God surveyed the mess we made of God’s good creation and acted to be with us and to care for us and to lead us in changing the bad fix that humanity is in.

The good news for us today is that the Messiah came in the person of Jesus son of Mary and Joseph. He came to begin what has been a long and arduous and sometimes seemingly never ending rescue operation to pull us and all humanity back from the brink of our own annihilation.

The second, and most important, question today is this: Are we ready to join the Messiah in this work? Each of us must answer that question for ourselves, each and every day.

Amen and amen.

The Lectionary Lab

Lectionary Lab Combined Edition for Christmas…