God Is With Us

Matthew 1:18-25


Rockville United Church
Rev. Dr. Duncan D. Newcomer

December 23, 2007

Both John and Jesus get non-traditional names at birth. In Jewish tradition, babies are named for former relatives to honor community and continuity. This is not so with John who becomes the Baptist, or with Jesus, who, our scripture says this morning, has a non-traditional name that means “he will save his people.”

What is enshrined in the foundational stories of our religion is “new thing,” not “old things.”

A reason why we are better Christians than our right wing fundamentalists is that we are not trying to set two ton stone rocks with the Ten Commandments on them in the town square. Why? Not because they are not important, but because the spirit-fire that wrote those commandments is a moving, dynamic, process and progression.

In our religion, time flies because our God moves. My own witness to this is that once I decided to throw my lot in with you guys—which I took to be a holy call, a sacred mission, I have never seen months fly by so fast. Of course, the apparent speeding up of calendar time is a side-effect of aging. But this sweep down the rivers of time these last twelve months of this journey has been like white water rafting and I’m a canoe or poke boat kind of a paddler.

God not only moves in mysterious ways. God moves. God just plain-out moves. If you don’t know God, think of it this way. “Life,” (one of God’s more pedestrian names), life moves fast already, and God? Well, God is one step ahead of life. God leads life. So when you’re up there in those temporary times of divine inspiration, up there with God, you move even faster than life. God is a spiritual turbo, and really blows past all competitors. This is one way also to see how faith works around the times of death. God, being one step, at least, ahead of life, isn’t tripped up by death. Life is one name for God. But when life runs out on you, God does not. That is our faith, our hope, our peace, our joy.

Now we often try to slow down, to slow down our lives. Stress management and spiritual practice help that. And one of my missionary projects with you all here is actually to help you fulfill that spiritual place attained by doing less more slowly. But the passivity of lots of spiritual new age practice is not the God-given peace of moving with God. I want to picture for you that God is peacefully faster than the speed of sound. Up in front of the fast moving jet, just on the other side of the sound barrier, boom, one sonic boom away, is the incredible silence of our speeding, moving God. It is serene up there. What’s exhausting is trying to keep up with a God-led life while hanging on to the past, all at the same time.

“Sleek for the Long Flight” was the name of a poetry book by a friend of mine. When I look at that Bell jet down at the Air and Space Museum, I think not just, “God, that was fast,” but I think, also, “God is fast.” When I look up at the Spirit of St. Louis, a plane I love and have read about, made models of, I think about how sleepy Charles Lindberg got on that long, long flight. Of course, not so sleek for the long flight. Often I feel, we feel, tired and sleepy like that. But then I remember that Charles Lindberg also had real visions of real angels on those wings as he flew those last hundreds of miles. And I think of how peaceful and propelled we are, and can feel, when we are carried by God out there in our long night’s journey into day.

Here’s a simple practical example of my high flying theology of this morning. Many times, many, many times, people come to church meetings tireder than tired. Tired at that edge of exhaustion and resentment of “I can’t do one more thing.” But in good churches that have good church meetings, there is often a time for personal talk. Some sharing of life stories and feelings. More and more churches are including some real spiritual practice in meetings. Some prayer. Some silence. Some scripture. Some reflections. I’ve seen this a lot. Some here. And two things always, always, happen. One is that people feel refreshed and enlivened in a peaceful way. Not exactly energized, just relieved, as if having shed (by sharing) the burdens of the day. The other thing, and there’s some social science to this—the actual business, practical, part of the meeting goes by more quickly, and more easily, in a better feel, than anyone anticipated! How about that! Spiritual efficiency. In the zone. The God zone! Spiritual efficiency, spiritual efficacy!

“For I am about to create new heavens and a new earth;
The former things shall not be remembered
Or come to mind.
But be glad and rejoice forever
In what I am creating;
For I am about to create Jerusalem as a joy,
And its people as a delight.” (Is. 65:17-18)

Now, my good Christian Christmas friends: “new,” new Christianity is not “change.” It’s “re-new.” Our religion, and our God, is as much about rebirth as birth. Rebirth is gospel; birth is creation.

In Christianity those two are married, become one, gospel marries creation. Rebirth from birth.

In Isaiah’s prophetic promises which become gospel good news, the blind who see don’t get new eyes or a third eye. They get their original creation eyes working again. The lame who leap leap on their old legs. Christianity is not spiritual steroids or human-divine growth hormones. That’s the way science can be used to protract—as Churchill said of Hitler—the human will to power—it’s the beautiful Greek Olympic idea of excellence made ugly.

Biblically, Isaiah’s vision was a restored highway to the old Jerusalem. Jesus’ vision, out of that hope, is a new self entering a new Jerusalem.

The resurrection of the body—that great Christian mystery—is, as an idea, a conservative idea. It’s not about progress. Jesus doesn’t get a second body, a better body, a botox magical science body.

Christianity is not rocket science. It’s humane humanity. When Lincoln looked at an African American, he saw a person, not an economic unit. When suffragettes looked at a woman, they saw a human being. That’s pretty conservative. When we look at a gay bishop or a gay couple mostly we see a bishop and a relationship.

And when we are renewed, reborn, transformed, we feel new. But we know who we are. So too with church renewal. And so there is no great fear, even though there is courage. There is no great anxiety, even though there is excitement. And there is no great stress, even though there may be tiredness.

I can wish you Merry Christian-gospel Christmas without scaring you to death because what’s new is the old renewed.

Amen.