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147: Christmas 1C (Dec. 27, 2015)

Eric Fistler

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147 for Sunday December 27, 2015, Christmas 1C

Featured Musician -The Nields, The song for today is “Jesus was a Refugee”

Episode 147 Christmas 1C- (Dec. 27, 2015)
Hello and welcome to the Pulpit Fiction Podcast, the lectionary podcast for preachers, seekers and Bible geeks. This is episode 147 for Sunday December 27, 2015, the first Sunday after Christmas, Year C.

Introduction and Check-in  

  • Pulpit Fiction Down and Out!

    • Robb’s leg
    • Eric’s plague

Quick-Fire Scripture: Colossians 3:12-17 Put on Compassion

  • “The reading from Colossians for this Sunday provides a wonderful text in which to address the coming new year” (Charles Cousar, Texts for Preaching, Year C, p. 71).
  • This, with preceding paragraph is about stripping away and putting on. It is a great passage for a time of transition.
  • When people are already thinking of things like resolutions, new calendars, and fresh starts, this text - especially if taken in broader context - lends itself well to that.
  • It pairs better with the Psalm than with the Gospel and Hebrew Bible texts - which are paired well together. Psalm 148 is a song of praise. Place near the end of the Psalter, it is about the all-encompassing power of God and the multi-faceted ways in which God may be praised.
  • This passage is about putting on kindness, compassion, gentleness, humility, and patience. It can stand as a reminder of what the Kingdom of God is made of.
  • On this Sunday after Christmas, we need to live as if Christmas mattered. If it is to matter, it is to matter in the way in which we live.
  • Worship is the best way to keep Christ alive. If you’re interested in keeping Christ in Christmas, we should also be interested in keeping Christ in the Sunday after Christmas - and all the Sundays and days that follow.

Featured Musician - The Nields, amazing group we were introduced to by listener and friend Liza Knapp. They have over 17 albums including a lot of amazing children’s music that won’t drive you crazy. The song for today is “Jesus was a Refugee”

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  • Kristi Garner - Thank you,I am a new preacher in a small church with no staff. I look forward to your podcast, it always brightens my day and strengthens my sermon. Happy Advent and Merry Christmas!
  • James West - You model excellent collaboration for this Lutheran pastor in N. Colorado -- newly arrived from 20 years of service in San Diego. Your stories of relocation are heartening. Thank you.

Gospel Reading: Luke 2:41-52 Jesus the preteen
Initial Thoughts

  • Famously the only story in the gospels of Jesus between birth and ministry.

    • Apocryphal gospels are full of stories of Jesus leading a remarkable childhood.
    • Like these stories, Luke’s gospel shows Jesus who was remarkable. Unlike these stories, which feature an impetuous Jesus killing and raising from the dead as if he’s playing with play-doh, Luke’s story reveals a Jesus who is remarkable in knowledge.
  • I (Robb) preached from this text in my first sermon after being commissioned - at the church where I grew up - Our Redeemer’s United Methodist Church in Schaumburg, Ill.
  • Feels like Epiphany Sunday and this story should be switched.

    • Instead of Christmas, Epiphany, Boy in Temple, Baptism, the lectionary gives us Christmas, Boy in Temple, Epiphany, Baptism.

Bible Study

  • Jesus on his way to the Temple

    • Cannot forget that Jesus was a Jew, with Jewish parents, living according to Jewish law and customs.

      • The Temple was an important part of the Lukan story. He was dedicated in the Temple. His culminating act will be in the Temple.
    • Modern parents wonder how the heck Mary and Joseph lost their kid for so long.Traveling to Jerusalem would have been a group affair. Didn’t notice he was gone until they had travelled for the day - when he didn’t show up to sleep.
    • Three days of searching would surely have been stressful, to say the least
  • Found in the Temple

    • Jesus was “sitting among the teachers, listening to them and putting questions to them.”

      • He was not learning from them. He was the teacher. In the Socratic method, the one asking the questions is the teacher.
      • Two Reactions:

        • Everyone amazed (foreshadows people’s response when he is teaching in Synagogue in 4:22. But this time, at least, he doesn’t keep going to the point where they want to throw him off the cliff).
        • Parents shocked.
  • Jesus’s response

    • Semi-rebuke of his parents.
    • “My Father’s House” could have been translated as “My Father’s affairs” (According to Common English Study Bible notes)

      • Seeking God’s approval over his parents.
      • Growing into his mission of God more important than pleasing earthly parents - and surprised they didn’t get that.
    • Jesus’ ministry and teaching is of primary importance - even above familial relations.

      • This is a radical statement in a time when familial relationships were of paramount importance
      • Foreshadows stories like:

        • the Prodigal Son, where the son rebukes his own family
        • 8:21 “My mother and brothers are those who listen to God’s word and do it.”
        • 12:53 “Father will square off against son and son against father; mother against daughter and daughter against mother…”
    • Anyone who knows a teenager might read this differently than intended.

      • Sarcasm in not in the Greek, but it is easily read into this response.
      • Luke points out that he is “obedient to them,” and that his parents cherished every word.
      • Piety of family is upheld.
      • Family still connected to God and the fifth commandment.
      • Error was not Jesus’s, it was Joseph and Mary’s.
    • Jesus “matured in wisdom and years, and in favor with God and with people.”

      • NRSV uses “Grew”
      • Growing in age and in favor with people is understandable
      • Growing in wisdom and favor with God is more perplexing - if you have an extremely high Christology (view of Jesus’s divinity)
    • Mary

      • Mary is the main parent here - like the annunciation stories, Mary is the main character. Joseph is little more than an afterthought (in opposition to Matthew, where it is the other way around).
      • Mary questions Jesus - which is strange in a public space, Joseph would have been expected to be the one to confront the son.
      • Mary asks, ““Why have you treated us like this?” We ask ourselves; we ask our families. We ask the church and we ask God, when our expectations are shattered.” (Craig Saterlee, Working Preacher)

        • Mary “cherished these things in her heart.”
        • “this translation is somewhat misleading. “Mary ‘keeps’ these things, much as Jacob kept events surrounding the troublesome Joseph or Daniel kept his visions. These events perplex and trouble Mary, who turns them over and over again and again.” (Charles Cousar, p. 74)

Sermon Thoughts and Questions:

  • How is it that Jesus grew? What does it mean for Jesus to have developed, matured. If Jesus was fully human, than such human experiences as growth and development would be necessary. If Jesus can grow, shouldn’t we? How did Jesus grow? By going to Bible study. By learning in community. By going to Temple with his family. By being a part of a community that nurtured him. Yes, he had a special relationship with God, even from the start, but that relationship was not fully realized. May the Church’s relationship with God parallel Jesus’s own growth and development.
  • Did Mary know?

    • There is evidence here that she didn’t understand who Jesus was. That even to her, his power and greatness would unfold.
    • Though she had a clue as to Jesus’ special relationship with God, it is clear from this story that she did not fully grasp what the angel’s promises meant. To be fair, How could she?
  • David Lose, Working Preacher: “So I wonder, Working Preacher, if that’s not a strategy we could regularly adopt. Rather than analyze these passages, perhaps we can just invite our people to enter into them. Perhaps, that is, the way to extend our celebration and contemplation of the Christmas story is to make it our own, inviting our people to identify with the characters. Indeed, inviting them to see themselves as those characters and hear the words – of angels, shepherds or, in this case, the twelve year-old Jesus – themselves.”
  • There is another time when we searched for Jesus for three days, only to find him somewhere least expected. But should it have been unexpected?

    • The scary part, perhaps, is that our search doesn’t end where we expect. Mary and Joseph searched three days for Jesus, and on the third day found him alive and well. But they didn’t find him in the expected places -- the safe confines of his extended family or the familiar company of the pilgrims’ caravan. After three days, Mary and Joseph found Jesus alive and well in the Temple at Jerusalem among the teachers of the law, the very company where it all will all end as Jesus is tried, convicted, and handed over to be killed. Mary and Joseph find Jesus alive and well after three days in a place they didn’t expect. This sounds like Easter.”

Psalm Nugget: Psalm 148 Richard Bruxvoort Colligan (psalmimmersion.com,@pomopsalmist)

Audible:
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Second Reading: 1 Samuel 2:18-26 Samuel grows
Initial Thoughts

  • Awkward little passage which pair nicely with the Luke passage
  • Theme: growing up

Bible Study

  • Hannah

    • Call back to Hannah- the woman who prayed for a child and then gave him away the moment he was born
    • If we take out the weird- giving a child away part- this is a pretty dramatic stewardship model:

      • She asks and received the thing she wants and values most in the world- a child
      • The in gratitude gives that most valuable thing to God not knowing whether she will have more children
      • She trusts in God and God blesses her
    • Hannah dedicates Samuel to God but she does not stop loving him or caring for him
  • Samuel’s identity

    • His linen ephod would denote him as a Nazarite or a priest from infancy, this is contrasted with his mother’s vest which marks him as a beloved son
    • Samuel is both son and prophet/priest- like Eli’s sons should be
  • Samuel vs. Eli’s sons

    • This difference begins with contrasting the faithfulness of Hannah in 1 Samuel 2:1-10 with Eli’s sons

      • Hannah give her most valuable thing to God - Eli’s sons take meat offered God (they literally take from God)
    • Samuel serves the Lord (vv. 11, 18, 21) which led to God’s favor

      • service to God vs. service to self interest
    • Both Samuel and Eli’s sons have free will to choose to turn toward God or away from God. Both reap the consequences of their actions
  • The difficulty of verse 25 - “they wouldn’t obey their father because the Lord wanted to kill them”

    • Similar to Exodus 9:12, “But the LORD hardened Pharaoh’s heart…”
    • Does God keep us from repentance and grace?

Sermon Thoughts and Questions

  • What do you value most? Would you be willing to give it to God? How would you do so? If you haven’t then why not?
  • How much time and energy do we spend serving God or serving ourselves?
  • Does God keep people from grace? Can we be forgiven for sinning against God? Don’t make this an easy answer- explore it

Tasty Wafer of the Week:

CLOSING
Thank you listeners and
Shout-Outs:

  • Dan Wunderlich “Art of the Sermon” Episode 6. Dan reflects on the lectionary in general, and back on our conversation with him in particular. There are some more ‘deleted scenes’ from our interview with him, and some good thoughts on the ways that we use and abuse the tool that is the Revised Common Lectionary.
  • Dan Iscra

Feedback:

Featured Musician -The Nields, The song for today is “Jesus was a Refugee”

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Thanks to our Psalms correspondent, Richard Bruxvoort Colligan (psalmimmersion.com, @pomopsalmist). Thank you to Scott Fletcher for our voice bumpers, Dick Dale and the Del Tones for our Theme music (“Misirlou”), Nicolai Heidlas (“Summertime”) and The Steel Wheels for our transition music(“Nola’s First Dance” from their album Lay Down, Lay Low) and Paul and Storm for our closing music (“Oh No”).