Matthew 11:2-11 JOHN M. BUCHANAN
DECEMBER 17, 1972

God, I have concluded, must have a great sense of humor. He must, I think, laugh at
the presumptuousness and pomposity of his children when they act as if they know more than
they do, or when they take hold of something that has happened in their own history -
pull it out of context, adorn it with myths, rituals and customs, and end up losing sight
of what it was that made that event so significant in the first place.

Surely God laughs at what has happened over the years to the birth of his Son. For

no event in history has become quite so institutionalized as the improbable birthd Jesus
Christ in Bethlehem of Judea. As that event has been remembered and celebrated across
the centuries it has acquired a train load of freight in the form of traditions;
traditions that increase in sentimentality every time they are repeated: traditions that
become more predictable with each succeeding repetition: traditions - the reciting of
which has become a tradition itself with very little relationship to the birth of God's
only son.

Now I hasten to confess that when it comes to Christmas traditions I probably have
no peer. Things must be in the right place: "the stockings are hung with a great deal
of care" in our household: I admit to a deep love for the customs that have come to have
meaning to my own family.

And yet I am accutely aware that what we have done with Christmas - and the reason
for the laughter of God at Christmas - is institutionalize it. We have given Christmas
life of its own - apart from the event it ostensibly celebrates. And when we do include
the birth of the baby as one of the customs of Christmas we sand off the sharp edges
of particularity so that it can mean whatever we want it to mean. So, the birth of Jesus
gets all mixed up with Santa Claus, gift exchanges, tinsel and lights: "Joy to the World,
the Lord is Come!" is played back-to-back with "Jingle Bell Rock" and no one seems to
know the difference - because in fact, there is no difference. It is all one package:
the predictable, sentimental, customary yuletide blast.

Objectively - and we do have difficulty being objective about traditions, don't we?
-the birth of Jesus, the Christmas event, was rather untraditional. It was unique, un-

likely, unexpected, improbable, contrary to popular hope and, for the most part, unnoticed.

and wa do have difficulty thinking theologically when

Theologically -/ we are so busy exercising our traditions - the Christmas event
Serves notice that God cannot be domesticated, locked in, made to conform to the formal
and predictable patterns of human expectation. Theologically, the Christmas event means
that we live on a planet that has been invaded by the . divine, and it serves notice that
if we are interested in perceiving the divine at work in our midst we'd better be looking
in some rather unlikely, untraditional and unpredictable places - such as a cattle stall -
or a cross on the town garbage heap.

Institutional religion has notoriously taken that measure of truth around which it
was organized and ritualized it. Religion notoriously takes that which it perceives as
"Holy" - meaning “other” ~ and so decorates it with customes that it is nc Jonger holy
at all ~ just traditional. And yet, at the heart of the matter, the religion of the Bible
“egins with a God who continually shows himself to be unpredictable: a God who doesn't
seem to care what men call him, preferring te use pseudonyms. That's a major Biblical
theme which comes sharply into focus as we think about the Christmas event. But it
begins long before, on the very edge of recorded history.

The Old Testament Lesson this morning, for instance, tells the story of Jacob on his
way from Beersheba to Haran. When night came he stopped, made camp, put a stone under
his head and went to steep. It was a journey, not a spiritual pilgrimage. During the
night dacob had a dream involving angels climbing up and down a ladder which extended
from earth to heaven. For our purposes this morning the content of that dream is net as
important at Jacob's reaction when he awoke and thought about what had happened, He said
two very important things: "The Lord is in this place" and "I did not know it". That ds
to say, God - as men were just beginning to perceive who he was - prave. himself to be
quite unconfined by the expectations of men, and quite free to act when and where and how
ne willed te act.

The theme turns up again in the 19th chapter of First Kings as Elijah is escaping
into the wilderness from a queen by the name of Jezehel. Elijah ts pursued, however,
not by Jezebel but by God who orders him to come up onto the mountain for a face to
face accounting. The text reads as follows:

"And behold, the Lord passed by, ard a great and strong wind rent

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the mountains, and broke in pieces the rocks beforc the
Lord, but the Lord was not in the wind; and after the wind
an earthquake, but the Lord was not in the earthquake; and
after the earthquake a fire, but the Lord was not in the
fire; and after the fire a still small voice".

The significance of that passage is that it recounts all the ways which men in
Elizah's time expected God to reveal himself. Men looked for the divine in the terrible,
mysterious cataclysms of nature. And here is the Old Testament asserting that God came,
not in the ways that were traditional; not in the normal, expected manner - but strangely,
differently, unpredictably. God, the Old Testament insists, assumes "pseudonyms",
strange namas. It is a theme that carries over into the New Testament.

a“ In our lesson this morning John the Baptist is in prison: this is the same John that
had announced God's mighty act of redemption and had been the first to identify Jesus of
Nazareth as the promised Messiah. But now, John was backing off, and sending messages
to Jesus asking whether or not he were the one - or whether they should be looking for
another. That is to say, John wasn't perceiving the revelation of God in the things
Jesus was doing. Paul Scherer writes: “John had read in the prophets that the Messiah

soereaaniieeneenrem
would come with a fan in his hand, to send the chaff scurrying from the threshing floor,
pitchfork and shovel,toward the blazing fire. But he dame so gently, doing such compassion-

ate, obscure things.... It wasn't right." (The Word God Sent, P.197)

For the Christian Jesus is the supreme pseudonym of God. And there could net have
been a more improbable or less traditional life than his own. The men of his age thought
they know al] there was to know about God, They had God pretty well defined in terms
of 600 odd "thou shalts" and "thou shalt nots". They had read the prophets and the
signs of their own time and hope for the coming of the Messiah was running high. They
knew what he would look Tike and what he would do when he came. He would restore their
kingdom by leading a successful revolt against the Romans; of if they happened to he en-
joying the Roman occupation he would lead a restoration and purification of the Temple
Religion. The fact was that Jesus met no one's expectations: he didn't measure up to any-

one’s messianic formula. When he ate in the ome of a tax collector he offended the purists

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the establishment: when he walked away from a cheering group of zealots whe wanted to make
him King and start the revolutian he offended them. Even his disciples had to Tearn

to discard their own expectations ~ and to follow a Lord who was most untraditional and
most unpredictable.

And the worst happened at the end. Who would think of a Messiah getting arrested?
Who could imagine God's son submitting te the humiliation of a trial and a public beating?
Who would look for God hanging on a cross, executed as a common criminal? Jesus upset
every current notion of God - every expectatian of the Messiah. And because they were so
locked into their traditions and custems and rituals and religion the vast and overwhelm-
ing majority of thom missed it all, and worse, participated in his crucifixion.

Well, where are we today? How are we doing with our traditions and with a God who
served notice time and time again - especially in Bethlehem - that he's really not too °
interested in our traditions but wili be among us in strange and pseudanymous ways?

The literature of our day is heavy with the suggestion that God isn't here anymore -
if he is at all. The serious theology of the day talks about the "hiddeness of God"
or the “eclipse of God" or, finally, the "Death of God." The idea seems to be that if
there is a God at all he has temporarily retirad to some remote corner of the universe
to let his creation destroy itself. Even "Jesus Christ Superstar", in many respects
a remarkable affirmation of the Gospel, leaves the question of God's revelation in Jesus
Christ ~ quite up in the air; or-more accurately ~- hanging on a cross. And if we take
at all seriously the contention that God's ultimate act came about in an obscure stable
in an obscure village in an obscure corner of the earth, it ought at laast to occur to us
that our problem is one of jooking in the wrong places. Or to say it another way, it
ought to occur to us that the very traditions of religion that observe God's past activity
may be the barrier to perceiving God's present activity. Gur sentimental fawning over
the manger, that is, just may be the reason why we don’t sense the ways God keeps
incarnating himself in the immediate world of 1972,

In an exceliant book, “Braad and Wine” Ignazio Silone, describes a conversation be-

tween an Italian revolutionary in the 30's and an otd priest. The priest, Don Benedetto,

Says:

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"In times cf conspiratorial and secret struggle, the Lord is

obliged to hide himself and assume pseudonyms. Besides, and you

know it, He does not attach very much importance to His name... Might

not the ideal of social justice be one of the pseudonyms the Lord is

using to free Himself from the control of the Churches and the banks?"

. When we understand that the “cause of sccial justice" in Italy in the 1930's was
Marxism, the sentiment becomes profoundly disturbing. Can it be seriously suggested that
God acts through Communists? The prophet Isaiah made a similar suggestion: he suggested
that Assyria - a pagan, enemy nation, would be the instrucment of God's will: that the
righteousness of God could be perceived in the defeat of Israel at the hands of the
Assynains. That kind of suggestion has never been very popular - because it flies in the
face of the comfortable theology and religious traditions of people. But the God of the
Bible uses pseudonyms - names other than people are accustomed to using. Jesus - for
instance: the baby of Bethlchen.

If desus Christ was the revelation of God - if Jesus is the supreme pseudonym of God
for us - then his life becomes the clue as we look for God's activity in our world.
Robert MeAfee Brown puts it this way:

"Since he was an outcast, we must not be surprised to find contemporary reflections
of his presence among the outcast. Since he was a servant, we must lock for stans of
his presence today among those who serve...Since he became man, we must acknowledge that
in every man there is one whe can ba served in his name, just as he served all men in
his Father's name. Since he lived very much in the world, we will look for him not onby
in holy places or by means of holy words, but we will tock for him also in the common
ordinary things of life for which he gave himself: bread (whether broken around a kitchen
table or at an altar), carpentry, men in need, even fax collectors."

In my life and yours that means that God comes and acts in ways wo must be very
careful to ciscern. He uses pseudonyms in our lives: he comes to us - in each other: he
acts through us when we love and serve cach other: he comes ta us in the surprises of Tave
and unexpected affected we are given to experience at Christmas. He is just as unpredic-

table in ur lives - as he has always been in history.

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And it all begins in this scason as we celebrate this most improbable birth. If it
nad happened today, Brown suggests, it would probably sound like this: the cniid would be
born of poor parents in a remote South African tribe. He would grow up as a member of an
Oppressed minority. He would never travel mere than fifty miles from his village and
Spend most of his time following his father's trade as a primitive farmer. He would gather
a few followers, be arrested as a trouble maker and after a short time in prison and a
phony trial be shot as an enemy of the people,

That's how improbable the birth oF Jesus Christ was. That's haw unpredictable
and untraditional cur God is. That is how incredible the message of Christmas can be:

God coming among men in the infant son of lower class Jews soon-to-be-refugees, in a
cowstal).

So - with one week remaining Tet us embrace our lovely Christmas traditions - but
this time with care, May they speak te us of a God who is not very predictable: may they
express for us a love that is real and heating and creating: may they open us to the ways
the love which came down at Christmas keeps coming down into the world and into our
lives: may they point us backward to that unlikely Bethlehem tableau, but also outward to
a world and a life in which God continues to reconcile and heal and Tove,

And when on Christmas Eve we sing-

“How silently, how Silently, the wondrous gift is given" - may we know that

it was given once ~ and ts given today, tomorrow and everyday. AMEN

Father, fill our traditions with yourspirit. Qpen us to the socdness of the birth: and
help us to see that goodness expressed in our world, our lives. Threugh Jesus Christ

our Lord. AMEN