The Advent series ties an initiative by the Christian Education committee to make Chrismons with the preaching series. The Advent devotional guide has a Chrismon each day for reflection; each Sunday I will focus on one of the Chrismons for the sermon and there will be a Chrismon making station for people to make Chrismons. The good news is the continuity of a theme across multiple areas points of engagement. The challenge for me is writing a sermon with the topic pre-determined.
This week, I used the lectionary Old Testament reading from Isaiah and then found the passage to read from Matthew (next week's lectionary passage) because it fit the sermon. When I heard the Isaiah passage read in worship (I had read it to myself during the week), I realized that it should have been saved to be used for next week's sermon on "peace." My bad.
The opening/conclusion story from FPC, Troy is actually a combination of two stories -- one of which was my search for Christens; the other was a search for something else. I could not remember what specifically happened in each search, so I took poetic license and combined the two (One of the fun parts of my work in Troy was with the worship committee, and they could confirm that any crazy conversation or adventure having to do with worship either happened or could have happened!).
I struggled to keep the content of the sermon focused, but the delivery went ok. I still remember being challenged at a preaching to seminar to always give the listener's something to do when they left, and I'm not sure I met that goal in this sermon.
The full Dr. Stotts quote actually notes that the antidote to the corrupting power of the world is to love people enough to weep with them. That is a powerful concept, but I couldn't figure out who to not chase the idea of weeping with others and keep the focus of the sermon. I will revisit that idea in another sermon. I am grateful for President Wardlaw's sermon at Dr. Stotts' memorial service (I happened to be glancing through it Monday) that reminded me of this quote and for the wonderful collection of Dr. Stotts' charges to graduating seniors that I keep on my book shelf and reread periodically. Dr. Stotts' gave powerful charges through the years.
“Looking for Chrismons:
Power” SAPC, November 27, 2016; Isaiah 2: 1-5; matthew 3:
7-17; 1st Advent
Matthew 3: 7-17 But when John the Baptist saw many Pharisees
and Sadducees coming for baptism, he said to them, “You brood of vipers! Who
warned you to flee from the wrath to come? 8 Bear fruit worthy of
repentance. 9 Do not presume to say to yourselves, ‘We have Abraham
as our ancestor’; for I tell you, God is able from these stones to raise up
children to Abraham. 10 Even now the ax is lying at the root of the
trees; every tree therefore that does not bear good fruit is cut down and
thrown into the fire.
11 “I baptize you with[a]
water for repentance, but one who is more powerful than I is coming after me; I
am not worthy to carry his sandals. He will baptize you with[b] the Holy Spirit and fire. 12 His
winnowing fork is in his hand, and he will clear his threshing floor and will
gather his wheat into the granary; but the chaff he will burn with unquenchable
fire.”
Then Jesus came from
Galilee to John at the Jordan, to be baptized by him. 14 John would
have prevented him, saying, “I need to be baptized by you, and do you come to
me?” 15 But Jesus answered him, “Let it be so now; for it is proper
for us in this way to fulfill all righteousness.” Then he consented. 16 And
when Jesus had been baptized, just as he came up from the water, suddenly the
heavens were opened to him and he saw the Spirit of God descending like a dove
and alighting on him. 17 And a voice from heaven said, “This is my
Son, the Beloved, with whom I am well pleased.”
Introduction: This Advent you have opportunities to make
Chrismons. The advent devotional guide
will have a different Chrismon for each day of Advent, and then each Sunday you
can make a Chrismon at the Chrismon station in the Narthex.
Chrismons, are ornaments made from Christian
symbols that point to Christ. The word Chrismon is literally a combination of
Christ and monogram http://www.umc.org/what-we-believe/what-are-chrismons
Every church with which I have ever been involved
either was doing Chrismons, or had done Chrismons at some previous time and is
trying to figure out how to bring Chrismons back into the life of the church.
When I arrived to serve First Presbyterian Church in
Troy, OH, they did not have an ongoing Chrismon tradition. But my second Advent, someone on the worship
committee thought we ought to bring that tradition back.
We then had a conversation only a church committee
could have – how they had used to make Chrismons, why they had stopped making
them, and so on. Finally, it was decided
we should bring back the tradition, and I should find the old Chrismons for us
to use.
the next day I began looking for Chrismons. First stop was the resource room down at the
end of the downstairs hallway. I had
apparently not noticed during my first year this room’s existence. I found lots of resources. Glue, glitter, stuff it looked like had been
used to make Chrismons once upon a time, but no Chrismons.
Second stop – the storage room off of the chapel. The
door was right beside the pulpit, but I’d never opened the door. When I did I discovered the mechanical
components for the heat and a/c for the chapel, and then another closet inside
the first closet. Lots of old stuff in
that closet. No Chrismons, but I did find
on the top shelf where you had to have a step-ladder to reach, a Christmas
wreath. Turns out it was the Christmas
wreath to be used to decorate the chapel that no one had been able to find the
year before.
Looking for Chrismons led to new discoveries, but not
what I was expecting to find.
As you move through the
making of Chrismons this year, I
challenge you to use the
Chrismons as the beginning point, and then look for the unexpected.
Move 1: On this, the first Sunday in Advent, you can
make the Lion Chrismon. Power
a. A lion because the people were looking
for God to send the ‘lion of Judah.”
1. The powerful one who would rescue
Israel.
2. Lion and power seem to go well together.
3. Lion is known to be the King,
the most powerful animal in all the forest.
4. The lion’s mane even looks like a crown
and the lion’s walk is one of majesty and power.
5. You remember Young
Simba from The Lion King, who sings
about how he just can’t wait to be king.
6. He’s going to
be a “Mighty king.”
7. His “Enemies beware.”
8. When he’s
king, he’s “Gonna be the main event.” The king who commands and all the animals
of the forest obey (I went to
lionking.org to read and listen to the words)
b. Lion Chrismon makes
sense.
1. Jesus brings with him the power of God.
2. Most of us
would like to have more power – power to control our own destiny;
power to control other
people’s destiny;
we want to move up at work
to have more power
3. Surely the Son of God will command the most power in
the world.
4. Easy to explain to your kids or grandkids. Lino the most powerful. Baby Jesus the most powerful person ever
born.
Move 2: But
then we meet Jesus and discover that making the journey to Bethlehem means
rethinking our understanding about power.
a.
Think about
the story we read in Matthew this morning.
1. Jesus
being baptized in the river Jordan.
2. Our
expectation, John’s expectation, is that Jesus will be the one who baptizes.
3. John has set the stage for this by shouting out to
everyone “the one who is more powerful than I is coming.”
“I am not worthy to wear his sandals.
4. We might expect Jesus’ arrival at the river to be
majestic and powerful, worthy of the one who is coming. Key the soundtrack to the Lion King and look for Jesus to saunter down to the river in
his kingly stride.
5. Instead, Jesus slips into the water next to John and
asks John to baptize him. Jesus,
assuming the same position as all the Sadducees and Pharisees and other sinners
who had come seeking to be baptized by John.
6. John tries to refuse Jesus.
7. “no, no. You baptize me. You are the powerful one.
8. But Jesus rejects John’s line of reasoning and submits
himself to John’s baptism.
9. This is not the case of mistaken identity – Jesus is
the Son of God. – as Jesus is baptized
by John, the heavens are opened and God speaks to confirm who he is.
10. It
is a case of a mistaken understanding of power.
11. If we want to understand the power Jesus brings to
the world, we have to look beyond our worldly understanding of power.
b.
God’s power we
discover in the arrival of the Christ-child is not about hierarchy, but about covenant
relationships and connections.
1. We should
already know this.
2. Poet Charles
Peguy in God Speaks notes that after God creates all the magnificence of
mountains and depth of seas, God wanted something else. God did not want power
or might, the submission of slaves or the automatic response of robots. God
wanted covenant. Consent. The joy of knowing that Creation would love God in return...the
sense that “God’s own people might proclaim the glorious deeds of God who
called out of the darkness into his light.”
3. The power of God to create, to call the world into
being, is revealed as the power to be bound together and to love one another.
Move 3: In the coming of the Christ-child, we discover
the God of creation coming to live among the created beings to love us and be
connected to us.
a.
A lion roars, and the animals of the forest fall into
place out of fear.
1. A baby arrives in Bethlehem.
2. Not
to scare us into submission, but to join us in our humanity.
3. C.S. Lewis in his Narnia series has a character, a
lion in fact, name Aslan.
He is
"the Great Lion"
of The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe and his role in Narnia is developed
throughout the remaining books.
.Aslan is Turkish for "lion". Lewis often capitalises the word lion in reference
to Aslan, since, at least partially, he represents Jesus Christ (Wikipedia, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aslan)
The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe: “the most pleased of the lot was the other lion, who
kept running about everywhere pretending to be very busy but really in order to
say to everyone he met, ‘Did you hear what [Aslan] said? Us lions.
That means him and me. Us lions.
That what I like about Aslan. Us lions.”
4. The
power of Christ is lived out by the arrival of this baby who will become “him
and me.”
5. Or to use a biblical term, Emmanuel, “god with us.”
b. A very different power than and relationship than
what our world teaches.
1. Jack Stotts,
former president of Austin Presbyterian Theological Seminary gave the
graduating seniors a charge every year at graduation.
One year in his charge he told them: “As citizens of
the most powerful nation on earth, we in this country are sorely tempted to
believe that the fundamental relationship between people is and should be
defined by power. That is power’s corruptive force.”
1.
And he goes
on to say that "the only antidote to the corrupt power of the world is, “a
love for all people…”
Jack Stotts, “A
God to Glorify” (Austin: APTS, 1929), 22-23 a collection of Stotts’ charges
to graduates as quoted by Ted Wardlaw, Remembering
and re-membering: A tribute in memory of Jack L. Stotts, a speech given by
President Wardlaw at ASA banquet, 2/6/2008
2.
The baby
whom we seek in Bethlehem comes as God’s power – not the power to coerce, but
the power to love and connect.
Conclusion: I did finally find the Chrismons back in OH.
There were in the bell
tower, a grungy place with water damage, the bottom of the creaky ladder that
would take you to the top of the bell tower, and storage boxes for things no
one needed anymore.
Dirty and broken in a
garbage sack. When I told the Worship
committee what I had found, they decided the old Chrismons were not what a
Chrismon should be, and we moved on to some other idea for Advent.
I invite you to reflect on
some Chrismons this Advent, even make a few.
But remember, the
Christ-child to whom the Chrismon points, may not be the Christ-child the world
expects.
But he is the one God
sends.
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