Advent 3: God With Us - Just One Small Change

The Surprise and Challenge of “God with Us”

Mt gives Jes’ genealogy but incredible birth with challenging choices. What you already know and what God makes possible. What kind of world do we live in? What’s possible? Luke: Mary’s faith. Matthew: Joseph. “With child of the Holy Spirit” – “just man,” “end betrothal.” In few words Mt. encapsulates the disruption and challenge of Jesus’ birth. Joseph could withdraw – fear. Like Mary he had to be open to having his own life marked in ways he couldn’t control. He believes, acts. He doesn’t get to name this child. The name is common – Joshua, Yehoshua, “Yahweh saves.” Jesus fills the meaning: He saves his people, deals with sin, the brokenness of humanity – all shown in the, deceit, violence, injustice. In Jesus, Joseph is shares in what God’s doing – his salvation!

Mt takes us deeper pointing to Isaiah 7 and the sign God gives through a maiden giving birth. Not a prediction but a parallel / resonance. In both, kingdoms clash. God acts. Birth is sign. Ahaz’ faith fails; he sells out. God’s challenge & grace continue. Can faith now be different?

One Change: Lifting Up the Meaning of “With”

Matthew emphasizes “God with Us.” He wants us to think about Jesus filling that meaning. God had been “with” his people. But now the “with” becomes direct, incarnation, God’s face.

It reaches back to God’s loving choice to create, to plant something of himself in us, his Image. God chooses to interact with us in time and history with its changes, shares with us. God chooses to deal with us in love rather than perfection, immutability. He acts in grace. So God come in flesh, human, us. So vulnerable. So beautifully God. Impossibles unite.

Human is not enough. Teaching & morality won’t save. God must intervene. As God, what Jesus does for us transforms who we are, to bring us to truly be children of God.

Jesus brings God’s transforming reality of holiness, self-giving love, & grace into the middle of human self-focus, self-deception. On Sinai God appeared in thunder, fire, trumpets, earthquake – as needed. Only in Jesus can the face of God be seen. The complex oneness of God who makes us for relationship, trust, and love, who wants our maturity, wholeness.

God with Us ... Us with God!

Jesus brings our ordinary life into God. The day by day existence he teaches in the Sermon on the Mount: anger, truth-telling, desires, honesty, anxiety, judgment of others, serving money & stuff, being peacemakers, etc. This narrow way of love is the excellent way!
God risks to be with us. Jesus is Lord, creator, judge. He serves but isn’t our servant. He loves, transforms, challenges, changes us, saves us. We want control, but he won’t be controlled. He wants to be with us, not at a distance. Go into the adventure. Into our true identity.

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Expected King & Waiting People

The Big Question!

Lk leads us with crowds through Nazareth, Capernaum, Opposition, Calling, Sermon. Centurion’s faith, Widow’s son: “Great prophet, God visiting his people.” Leads to John’s question with revealing reflections. John is in prison for courage against Herod Antipas. He is training his own disciples. He’s loves the desert, fasting. Jesus is at banquets, not fasting, etc. John told of him with fire and judgment.

John knows Jesus, but he’s disconcerting. Jn sends his question directly to Jesus: ‘Are you the one who is coming?’ Israel’s story & scripture throb in its words.

An Answer in Deeds that Challenge Us to Recognize God

Jes could say, ‘Yes, I am.’ ‘How could you ask?’ But Jes understands the question & knows the answer changes the world. He answers with actions. But even marvels must be a language to be an answer. Jes enacts words of Isaiah, Malachi. etc.

Jes’ deeds say God’s ancient promises are here. Only the Messiah/God could do it. God’s image comes to new, surprising clarity. Very disconcerting. Don’t stumble!

Looking for a King in the Wilderness

Jes knows the crowds carry the same question/quest. They went out to John looking for a Messiah, an anointed King. Jesus pushes them to think deeply. They went into the wilderness seeking... What? A reed (Herod)? King? A prophet! John’s own identity partly answered his question. He was gateway to a new era. He welcomed ordinary people, soldiers, tax collectors. Last prophet of the old, pointing to new.

Pharisees rejecting John led to rejecting Jesus, refusing God’s good purpose for them.

John and Jesus, Different, Caricatured – Both Come from God

People want God to be tidy with short clear answers. Who is coming? John came. Jesus came. Very different look, sharing the same great event, different roles.

People had ready boxes for them. But what God is doing is vast, complex, real, beautiful, life-giving. You have to see it, live inside it. Wisdom & justice shine.

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Authority and Faith to Give Life

The authority and power that is embodied in your word is something I can recognize as authority, but it is of a wholly greater realm than the hierarchy I know and live. It gives life and health. It creates life.
I see it. I recognize it. I know it’s real.

Simply say a word. That word will carry the gift of life across any distance, up and down any human hierarchy. That word gives life.

That recognition of the reality of God’s creative, life-giving authority and power in Jesus, the very presence of God in Jesus, that recognition, Jesus say, is “such a great Faith.” It is not defined by grasping details of doctrine or imposing rigorous practices useful though those may be. It is seeing, recognizing, knowing – in heart and mind and body, philosophically, emotionally, aesthetically, analytically, musically, with every part of my being – that here among us is the God who created us, sustains our life, who has loved and will love us forever.

That’s where Jesus is leading his disciples and every one of us.

Notice, Luke doesn’t even tell us that Jesus spoke a word. Those who’d been sent, Jewish elders and friends, simply returned. God had intervened, health and life had broken out. That slave was alive, thriving.

A Great Prophet has risen among us. God has visited his people. Amen.

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A Trained Disciple with a Solid House

Extraordinary Teaching for Ordinary People

We join Luke again as he lead us to see Jesus in the Sermon on the Plain (Lk 6).

Crowds of people in need, hopeful, hurting, expecting, but what? healing, glory,
Remember how amazing Jesus’ teaching is in this sermon: love of enemies, rejection of possessiveness; generosity without expectation, etc.

But these words are for ordinary people of all kinds. Jesus knows well that his hearers, even apostles, are sinful – “blind.” But still he sees them as growing, learning as disciples, coming to full formation so that they are like Jesus himself.

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Sabbath and the People of God

Sabbath and the People of God

Thomas Robinson, Luke: Anointed with God’s Spirit 15, November 7, 2021 Luke6:1-16 Trans.TR

Jesus’ Disciples Pick Grain on the Sabbath

1 And it happened one Sabbath, that Jesus was walking through the standing grain, and his disciples started plucking and eating the heads of grain, rubbing them in their hands. 2 Now, some of the Pharisees asked them, “Why are you doing what’s not lawful on the Sabbath?”

3 Then in response Jesus asked them, “Didn’t you ever read what David did when he himself was hungry, along with those with him? 4 How he entered into the house of God, and then taking the Loaves of the Presentation, he ate them and gave to those with him [1 Sam 21:1-6]. And it’s not lawful for any to eat those loaves, except only the priests?”

5 And he used to say to them, “The Son of the Human is Lord of the Sabbath.” Jesus Restores a Man’s Crippled Hand on the Sabbath

6 And it happened on another Sabbath, that he entered the synagogue and was teaching. Now a man was there, and his right hand was withered. 7 And the scribes and the Pharisees were closely watching Jesus, to see whether he would heal on the Sabbath, because they wanted to find a reason to accuse him.

8 Now he himself understood their ways of reasoning, and he said to the man with the withered hand, “Get up and stand in the center.”

And he rose and stood. 9 And Jesus said to them, “I’m asking all of you, whether it’s lawful on the Sabbath to do good or to do harm, to save a life or to destroy it?” 10 And after looking around at them all, he said to him, “Stretch out your hand.”

And he did so, and his hand was restored.

11 But these men were filled with mindless fury and they began talking intensely with each other what they might do to Jesus.

Jesus Names Twelve Disciples as Emissaries

12 And it happened during these days that he went out onto the mountain to pray, and he spent the whole night in that prayer with God. 13 Then, when day came, he called together his disciples and selected twelve of them, and these he designated “apostles”:

14 Simon, whom he also named Peter (“Rock”), and Andrew his brother, and James (Jacob)

and John, and Philip and Bartholomew, 15 and Matthew, and Thomas, and James the son of

Alphaeus, and Simon who was called a zealot, 16 and Judas (Judah) the son of James, and Judas

Iscariot, who became a betrayer. –––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––

Exodus 20:8-11 From the Ten Commandments
8 Remember the Sabbath day, and consecrate it. 9 Six days you shall serve and do all your

labor/occupation. 10 But the seventh day is a Sabbath to Yahweh your God; you shall not do any of your labor – you, your son or your daughter, your male or female slave, your livestock, or the alien resident in your towns. 11 For in six days Yahweh made heaven and earth, the sea, and all that is in them, but rested the seventh day. Therefore, Yahweh blessed the Sabbath day and consecrated it. [Gn 1:1 – 2:3]

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Creating Inclusion & Release

Thomas Robinson, Luke: Anointed with God’s Spirit 13, October 10, 2021 Jesus Heals Leprosy and Paralysis and More We’re in the early days of Jesus Galilee ministry. Lk told us about Nazareth, positive response turns bad when Jesus talks about a Gentile widow and leper, Naaman. In Capernaum he casts out an “unclean being of power” (demon). He calls Simon as a disciple with no training, declaring himself a “sinful man.” Now two amazing healings. It’s good to “hear a text for the first time.” Note how Lk makes the settings general. These are side by side for meaning. Lk leads us toward Jesus’ ultimate meaning. Lk is using Mk with events that shaped controversy and clarify Jesus’ distinction. Lk shows how Jesus sees varied human problems together. He heals fever like a “demon.” Gentiles, lepers, demons, paralyzed, sinful – all show human brokenness. Freedom from Exclusion First, the “leper.” (5:12-14) [Remember Naaman. In Lk 17, ten lepers, one Samaritan.] “Leprosy” a horrific disease: Mother Teresa, Father Damien, Dr. Paul Brand, Gift of Pain. But this is the “leprosy” law of Lev. 13-14 – long, strange. Not about the disease we call leprosy, but forms of skin scaliness, flaking (eczema, psoriasis), after burns or boils; leprosy in clothes, in walls of houses, etc. A visible sign of ritual uncleanness, impurity, like touching the dead, bodily emission, etc. But devastating result. Not sick or contagious, but excluded from human contact. This is an archetypal purity boundary. Jesus says it’s now over. Jesus intentionally breaks the law, the boundary. Jesus touches and impurity doesn’t flow to him, but the man is cleansed. We’ve had such boundaries! W.E.B. Du Bois, “the color line” (1903); a girl pregnant out of wedlock; a divorced person; a person who grows up with same-sex attraction and discovers that they’re gay; sometimes a person who disagrees with “us” about church organization or worship practice. People didn’t cheer when Jesus touched him. Jesus knows the assumptions are deep. Don’t talk. Go offer the sacrifice. Let the priest certify you. Free your life. Freedom from Bondage Next, Lk really emphasizes the unity of human brokenness and Jes’ power/authority to heal. It a teaching situation: Pharisees, law experts & God’s power to heal. A man is disabled, can’t walk, but maybe quite vocal and engaged. Lk & Jes both call him “human”/anthropos to show all of us in him. He & friends break open roof to get to Jesus. Wow, What a scene! Jesus sees faith in breaking roof boundaries. Jesus breaks back – through physical disability to human brokenness of sin, like Peter. Teachers are disabled; can’t see how God heals the whole person – “blasphemy.” Jesus, son of the human (Dan 7:13-14), lives out God’s authority to renew humans. Jesus raises the human to new life – to walk in freedom, whole, released, at home. This is the Gospel in anticipation. Jesus will take on our suffering, sin, & give life! A kind of ecstasy breaks out – even some Pharisees? But it’s also scary. God engages not just mighty rulers but ordinary broken, bold humans like us. “Incredible things”!

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