Yalla, Yalla! Come and See!

John 1:43-51

January 14, 2018

 

I just came back from the Holy Land…

I’ll try to restrain myself from telling you everything I saw today….

We saw a lot in a week.

 

There was one person who pulled it all together though –

It was our guide named Rami.

 

Rami is an Israeli citizen;

He’s a Palestinian Arab;

And he’s a Christian.

 

He grew up in a town you may have heard of … Nazareth.

It is an Arab town and the vast majority of its residents are Muslim.

 

As an Arab Christian,

Rami is a minority within a minority.

 

As a Palestinian, doors open to other Israeli citizens are not open to him.

He went to university,

But the first job he could get after college was a cook.

Five years ago he found this job as tour guide…

And truly  – this is a calling for him.

 

Rami is the best tour guide I’ve ever had….

What makes him such a great guide isn’t the knowledge he has about Holy Land

(though he has plenty of knowledge about the Holy Land);

What makes him so great is the fact that he wants everyone to

“Come and see.”

 

“Yalla, Yalla” he says in Arabic…

“Let’s go!”

“Come and see!”

 

Come and see the places where Jesus walked.

Come and see the places where he made miracles.

Come and see the places where he met the disciples,

Where he prayed in Gethsemane,

Where he spent the night of Maundy Thursday.

Come and see where he was born;

Where the shepherds watched over their fields;

Where Christians walk the path Jesus did on the way to the cross.

 

Yalla, Yalla.

Come and see.

 

Now frankly, some of the sites in Jerusalem aren’t much to see today.

Our tour leader talked about “Holy Land Disappointment Syndrome” – “HLDS.”

It’s a “condition” that occurs when people take a trip to see these sights

as pilgrims have done for centuries,

and it just doesn’t feel as spiritual as they thought it would.

Holy Land Disappointment Syndrome…

 

I don’t doubt that can happen.

I don’t doubt that when people make the pilgrimage to the holy land

It doesn’t always match up to what they thought it would be like…

It doesn’t always meet their expectations.

 

After all, we are 2000 years from the events of Jesus’ life.

In that time, that small piece of land about the size of New Jersey,

has arguably been the most contested piece of land in history….

 

Romans, Byzantines, Turks, the Crusaders, Brits, Israelis, Palestinians….

All have occupied the Holy Land;

Battles have brought destruction to the Holy Land over and over again.

 

There are bullet holes in the Church of the Nativity –

the traditional site of Jesus’ birth – from as recently as 2002.

 

Churches have been built and rebuilt over these holy sites,

And they don’t look like they did when Jesus alive…..

When pilgrims travel to the holy land for the first time,

Sometimes they’re surprised by that…

Sometimes they get “Holy Land Disappointment Syndrome.”

 

This was my second trip to the holy land,

And I didn’t get HLDS either time.

I was not disappointed at all…

Because what’s sacred about the Holy Land isn’t the place –

            It’s what happened there.

 

Yalla, Yalla,

Come and See, Rami says….

Come and see what happened here.

 

As we stood on the shores of the Sea of Galilee,

By the healing pools of Bethesda,

On the Mount of Olives,

On Golgotha…

The Scriptures were opened to us –

Not because of what the places themselves,

But because of what happened there.

 

So today, imagine you’re Nathaniel

And you live in the Galilee – in a relatively large town called Cana.

 

You’ve heard stories about this man Jesus.

Everyone has heard stories about this man who has made his way from Nazareth up north.

 

This blew me away…

Throughout the area between Nazareth and Galilee, according to our tour guide Rami,

even today people have stories about Jesus….

They are not necessarily stories that are in the Bible,

but stories they have told each other for centuries.

 

They are stories about miracles they witnessed,

and stories about how their community connected to him.

 

Rami now lives northeast of Nazareth in a town called Reineh,

A town known for its four springs.

 

The locals there have their own story of Jesus.

They say that Jesus came through town,

And stopped to water his donkey at a spring.

While he was there,

The locals stole the donkey….

 

Everyone has a story about Jesus.

Even today, they have stories about Jesus.

 

As Jesus makes his way north out of Nazareth toward the Sea of Galilee,

One of the first towns he would have arrived at is Cana –Nathaniel’s hometown.

 

As Jesus passes through Cana,

Apparently he sees Nathaniel sitting under a fig tree.

(I tried to find THE fig tree so I could take a picture…

but alas, whereas I saw the sycamore tree that Zacchaeus supposedly climbed up to see Jesus,

Nathaniel’s fig tree apparently is lost.)

 

As Jesus gets to Bethsaida,

He finds Philip and says to him, “Yalla, yalla!”

“Come and see.”

 

And Philip then finds his friend Nathaniel,

And he says to Nathaniel,

“Yalla, Yalla!”

Come and see…

 

But there’s a problem….

Nathaniel has “Jesus Disappointment Syndrome….”

 

He’s heard some good stories about Jesus…

Miracles being made…

Maybe he could be the messiah….

 

But Philip says he’s from Nazareth!

That just doesn’t fit with what Nathaniel expects!

Nazareth is a village of maybe 20 families – 150 people at the most…

“Can anything good come out of Nazareth?” he asks.

 

Can anything good come out of those places where life has been hard?

Can anything good come of those places which struggle with poverty?

Can anything good come out of a small village,

Out of Nazareth…

out of the villages and cities of countries in Africa,

out of Haiti, out of El Salvador?

Out of places where people live who don’t look like us?

 

Some like Nathaniel dare to say the answer is, ‘no.’

 

It takes someone like Philip and someone like Rami to say,

“Yalla, Yalla!”

“Come and see.”

 

Nathaniel chooses to come and see,

And he is transformed.

 

As we celebrate Martin Luther King Day this weekend,

We know that many white people had no understanding

Or chose not to understand

what the civil rights movement was all about.

We were blind to the injustices blacks in our country faced.

 

King said, “Come and see.”

Come and see for yourselves.

Sit at a lunch counter in Montgomery.

Take a bus with some freedom riders.

Talk to a black man who’s tried to vote.

Come and see what’s happening.

Those who did were transformed.

 

God calls each of us like Nathaniel to ‘come and see.’

Where is the place you need to see?

Where is a place you think you’ve got pegged?

Where is the place you could never imagine anything good coming out of?

 

It could be as far away as Nazareth,

Or as nearby as Arlandria or Capitol Hill.

 

Where do you need to see?

Where are you called?

Yalla, Yalla!

Let’s get going!

 

Can anything good come of out Nazareth?

Well…Jesus did.

From Ordinary to Extraordinary

Sermon by Good Shepherd Seminarian Jennifer Moore

December 31, 2017

 

Whew! We made it. I want you to turn to your neighbor. Shake their hand, pat them on the back, and say, “Hey! We made it!”(pause) That’s right. We made it through another Christmas. For some people, that means making it past weeks – maybe even months! – of preparations. For others, making it through Christmas means getting through another season of sadness and loneliness.

Whatever “getting through Christmas” means for you, there’s a good chance that, like most people, now that you’re on the other side of it, you’re relieved it’s over. Not me! When Christmas is over, I mostly feel disappointed, not relieved. See, I love Christmas. I love the corny light displays. I love baking (and eating) Christmas cookies, caroling, decorating the tree, drinking hot cocoa, and watching terrible made-for-Netflix Christmas movies.

When my family lived in Germany, I loved Christmas even more. Germans really know how to do Christmas right, you know? There were outdoor Christmas markets in most of the neighborhoods, and I can remember walking around the stalls, the chilly air thick with the smells and sounds of Christmas – spicy baked goods, mulled wines, peals of laughter and church bells. My sister and I would wander the market with spending money from our parents  – I can still feel the weight of the five mark coins in my jeans pocket. I even remember the quality of the light – the way the light from the booths spilled out onto the cobblestone sidewalks, illuminating the crisp winter night.

To me, this season is magical. And when it is over, it is just – over. After the gifts have been put away, and the empty boxes and shredded wrapping paper have gone to the curb, and the leftovers have been eaten up, and the relatives sent home, we return to our mundane lives. We go back to school and work. We return to meeting deadlines, making dentist appointments, walking the dog, doing homework and laundry, and feeling busy. Christmas is an extraordinary event that interrupts the ordinariness of our lives.

In Luke, the events leading up to Jesus’ birth are certainly extraordinary. Mary finds out she is having a baby – not from a drugstore test, but from an angel of the Lord. Meanwhile, up in the hill country, her relative, Elizabeth, is preparing for the birth of her own angel-announced baby, whose sole purpose in life is to prepare the way for Jesus. When Mary meets Elizabeth, some extraordinary things happen: John leaps in Elizabeth’s womb, Elizabeth makes a profound statement of faith, and Mary is moved to sing a song of praise. The events leading up to the birth are so spectacular, so extraordinary, that you would expect the birth itself to be a star-studded, Broadway-worthy production of epic proportions.

But no. If anything, the actual birth of Jesus is startlingly ordinary. In fact, the story of that night begins in the most mundane way possible: “In those days a decree went out from …. Blah blah blah …. Census …. Taxes …. Yada yada yada.” Yawn! Mary and Joseph, ordinary subjects of occupied Roman territory, must travel to Bethlehem to be counted for tax purposes. It’s like saying that Mary and Joseph went to the DMV to renew their vehicle tags. It’s the kind of administrative detail that you would normally omit from a story – that is, if you want to keep people’s attention. But not Luke – no, Luke starts the story this way.

And because Mary and Joseph are so ordinary, they can’t get a VIP suite at the Holiday Inn of Bethlehem. In fact, they can’t get any room at all. You can almost imagine Joseph, tired and desperate, his wife showing obvious signs of labor, standing there pleading with the innkeeper. “Dude. Look at my wife – she’s is going to deliver in this lobby if you don’t find us a room. Seriously, man.” This is how they end up in the stable. It’s such a human predicament.

In popular images of the stable, Mary and Joseph are clean and glowing, wearing flowing blue garments, surrounded by adoring and adorable, equally clean livestock. The baby is wrapped in a soft blanket, sleeping soundly. They hay in which he lays is clean and golden. In reality, though, we have to assume that both Mary and Joseph are filthy, covered in dust from the journey, and slick with sweat from the effort of childbirth. They certainly aren’t wearing blue, the color of royalty. Not even Roman citizens, Mary and Joseph are Jewish subjects in occupied territory, lower than low, almost as far from royalty as people could be. And have you ever smelled a barn? As Mary labored, the stench of that barn would have filled her nostrils. The manger is not a bassinet – it is a feeding trough, into which animals stick their snouts. It’s entirely possible that Jesus’ first bath came from a cow’s tongue.

Of course, all of this is conjecture. Luke’s description is so brief, our imaginations are left to fill in the details. Luke tells the story in a single sentence:  “And she gave birth to her firstborn son and wrapped him in bands of cloth, and laid in him a manger, because there was no place for thm in the inn.” It sounds so ordinary. So human. Not divine at all.

And yet…

In the very next scene, God announces the birth of Jesus to shepherds with not one angel, not two, but an entire chorus of angels. Here is the light show! Here is the fanfare! And the audience? A group of humble shepherds. Not a court of kings, or men of influence, but shepherds. And these shepherds, amazed and terrified, run to see for themselves. They become the first witnesses to the arrival of the Messiah, unable to keep this news to themselves. If not for their exuberant and uncensored proclamation, this birth in this stable to these people might have gone unnoticed, just another human event. Even Mary, who has insider information about Jesus, is amazed by what the shepherds have to say. She can only take it all in, treasuring their words and pondering them in her heart.

I wish I could know what she was thinking. It must have seemed incredible to her then, as it does to us now. Because she knew, as we do, that this night was anything but ordinary.

This night was extraordinary, because on this night, the Lord God Almighty, who breathed the universe into existence with a Word, the God who transcends all time and space, this God chose to come to us and live like us – ordinary people, living ordinary lives, engaged in the mundane tasks of human existence. God chose to come to the stench and sweat of a dirty stable. God chose to be announced to the world by a band of humble shepherds. God chose to be born into a family that was not only ordinary, but powerless as well. God, the one whom the Evangelist John calls the “true light,” came into the darkest place on earth – a first-century barn in a poor, occupied land – to bring the light of salvation to anyone who could believe it.  “And the Word became flesh and lived among us.”

Why would God do such a thing? God came to us so that we could know the unknowable. The unknowable God, whose Word creates life, sent the Word to live among us, so that we could meet Jesus and have a glimpse of the new life God promises. God takes the ordinary stuff of human existence, and turns it into an encounter with the divine.

This is the mystery of the Incarnation: that God comes to us in the most ordinary times and ways, and turns the everyday stuff of humanity into something new. God turned a dark and dingy stable into a royal nursery. God turned Mary and Joseph, ordinary people, into the Holy Family. God turned a shameful death on the cross into resurrection and new life. God turns ordinary water into a bath that washes away sin. Jesus comes to us in bread and wine, and Jesus comes to us through one another, turning our very bodies into instruments of God’s grace. When we worship and read scripture together, and offer up our hands and hearts to one another in service and caring, we are transformed.

God comes to us every day, all the time. Not just once a year around the Christmas tree or the family Christmas dinner, but also when family dinner is overshadowed by loss, or when nobody has the motivation to haul out the Christmas tree. God comes when we receive good news, and also when our world is crushed by bad news. God comes to be in it, and in us –  the good, the bad, and the appaling.

God is not just present, God acts. God’s presence is a verb, not a noun.  God shows up and also transforms the ordinary into the extraordinary. God is continually making all things new.

As we are making our lists of resolutions tonight, how will we recognize God’s presence in the ordinariness of our lives in this new year? How will we make space and time to see God everywhere? We don’t often get a chorus of angels, but we do hear words of encouragement, and we experience wordless acts of compassion. Will you allow God to use your hands and feet in acts of compassion? How will you be made new?