January 8, 2012
All Stirred Up - Matthew 2:1-12
Pastor: Luke Maybry
DownloadThis past week was a very peaceful week for me, which was good because I needed one. The past several weeks before that were anything but peaceful. Advent and Christmas compete closely with Lent and Easter as being the busiest time of the year for pastors. I took the week after Christmas off, actually, but I got very little rest. I’m not complaining. I had a great time. But for four of those days, we had seven children under ten years old under one roof, six of whom were under six. Fun? Yes. Peaceful? Hardly! So as much fun as it was, it was also good to get back to work and back to normal. I’m sure you experienced much of the same thing. Christmas gets us all stirred up. We eat too much and our digestive systems get all out of whack. We gain too much weight. Our houses turn into a disaster. And then, and then, there’s often that one family member who just rocks our world. You know exactly what, and who, I’m talking about. Christmas definitely gets us all stirred up.
Luke’s version of the Christmas story is peaceful, I guess. It actually has its fair share of mayhem, too, but there are few peaceful moments, and we always portray it peacefully. Matthew’s version of the Christmas story, however, is anything but peaceful. Matthew stirs us all up on the very first verse. Matthew starts out with a genealogy, which is generally something that we skip, but Matthew’s genealogy is unconventional. No respectable genealogy would have women in it, but Matthew has five women in Jesus’ genealogy, four of whom are gentiles, one of whom (Rahab) was a prostitute, and the other of whom (Tamar) acted like a prostitute. It’s definitely out of sorts for a first century genealogy. Then later in Chapter 1, you have Jesus’s birth, which like Luke, has Mary and Joseph on the wrong side of the tracks on wrong side of the social norms.
And then you have chapter 2, this story of the wise men. Matthew is the only Gospel to mention the wise men, and he only mentions them this one time. Whoever they are and whatever they do and wherever they come from and however many of them there are, they’re all out of whack. They travel for days, probably weeks or months, following this star. And they go to King Herod to tell him that they found the King of Jews, which is the height of irony. And it’s dangerous. Herod is a despot, and like all despots, Herod is paranoid and afraid. He does not like competition in any form. He would not like either the message or the messenger. If these wise men are not very careful, he will put their heads on a platter, just like John’s head. So, needless to say, Herod got all stirred up at the wise men telling him about Jesus the Christ. And not only Herod, the whole blasted city of Jerusalem got all stirred up. That’s what the Greek literally means. They got stirred up. That word is used primarily at Jesus and Lazarus’ resurrections, describing how people reacted. They got all stirred up. They got stirred up at Jesus’ birth, and they stayed all stirred up through his Resurrection.
Jesus has a way of stirring us up sometimes, all the time actually. In fact, if we are not stirred up, then we’ve missed something very important. I’ve heard before that the modern Church’s greatest heresy is that we have managed to make Jesus boring. That’s what they think of us, out there, that we’re cold, stiff, and boring. If you read the Bible, you will see that it is anything but boring. God is anything but boring. Sometimes God is jealous, and angry, and regretful, and loving, but never is God boring. How is it humanly possible, then, that people fall asleep in Church? I’m not so much preaching to you, beating you over the head for nodding off every now and then, but how can we preachers and we worship leaders pull of authentic worship of God Almighty that is at the same time boring? When I left Austin seminary, the class behind me had some tee-shirts printed up that said something to the effect of, “Friends United Against Boring Sermons.” Jesus stirs us up too much to ever bore us.
And it’s not only worship, it’s how we do things. It’s structure. Structure is a good thing. God gave us order, and that’s good. We have to have an orderly way to make good decisions in the Church. But somehow, we’ve elevated the structure above the mission that the structure is supposed to serve. Never did Jesus sit around in meetings all the time. Actually there are a few committee meetings in the book of Acts, but all of those except one are pretty active. It only gets boring in Acts 20. Do you remember that story? Paul had a meeting and started droning on and on until midnight, and it was so boring that a young man named Eutychus fell asleep and he fell out the window, three stories and died. Paul knew he was wrong about that, too. Go read it. I agree that the Presbyterian way is essentially that we do this better when we gather around a table and talk about it. I agree wholeheartedly with that. And, again, there has to be an orderly way to do that. But on the other hand, I don’t think God calls us to meetings all the time. Never did Jesus sit around long enough for that.
You came to Church for lots of reason this morning. We all do. One of those reasons, whether you think about it or not, is to have an experience with God. You want to worship and God and glorify God, but you can’t do either of those without first connecting. And if you connect, you’ll get stirred up. That always, always happens. And when you get stirred up, it’s contagious. It’s not always easy, and it doesn’t always make us comfortable, it often makes some very real demands on us. It requires that we reassess our lives and how we spend our time and money. It often causes family problems. It often causes problems within congregations. But if you want Jesus here, then get ready to get stirred up.
I think the thing that really stirs us up about Jesus is that Jesus tells us that it’s no longer about us. Herod got all fussy when he heard about Jesus because Herod’s world revolved around Herod, about how people treated him and even worshipped him, about his own power, about his wealth. And here comes these wise men from who knows where and they tell Herod that none of that matters, that there’s another King. That’s the epiphany, I guess. There is a King and you’re not it. We’re not it. And that King calls us outside of ourselves.
I’ve been thinking a lot about our Church in 2012. Every year, we think about what we should do, and how we should relate to this new community that we’re in. If you’re Herod, the big question is what you want for the Church. But then these wise men come in here and tell us there’s another King, that it’s God’s Church and not ours. And so the question then becomes what God wants for the Church, and how God wants us to relate to Southwest Charlotte, and how God wants us to treat our neighbors. The question is not about us, but about God, and therefore always about them. It has to be.
Now if we do that, that’ll really stir us up. If it really is all about God, then that changes lots and lots and lots of things. “A child has been born for us, a son given to us. Authority rests upon his shoulders. He is named Wonderful Counselor, Everlasting Father, and Prince of Peace.” Do you remember that? That’s Isaiah 9. That’s Christmas. If God did it our way, he would come in and say, “Luke, you are the Wonderful Counselor, the Everlasting Father, the Prince of Peace. Do it your way.” But he doesn’t do that. Because it’s not about Luke, or you. It’s about God and what God is doing here and how God calls us to act. We know that through reading the Bible and praying. So you have to those things. And if you read the Bible and pray, then I am certain that God will call us more and more out there to love those whom God loves. And if you do that, if you take Christmas to heart, it’ll stir you up. It’ll stir all of us up. And that’s my prayer for Central Steele Creek in 2012, that God will come among us and stir us all up to be a part of God’s Kingdom.
In the Name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit, Amen.
