Sermon for Sunday, December 23, 2018 Advent 4 Year C

Transcription

1 Sermon for Sunday, December 23, 2018 Advent 4 Year C Sisters and brothers in Christ: grace to you and peace from the longed-for Christ, Jesus our Lord and Savoir, one eternal God with the Father and the Holy Spirit, Amen. lutvad vighojmoh jih batlh tuhmohghach je. However much I may have always wanted to do a whole sermon in Klingonese (or Vulcan) simply because I love Star Trek, I have to admit that neither my Klingonese syntax nor grammar is the best it s actually rather hard constructing a meaningful phrase from a dictionary or grammar, but I just gone one as a present from some people here, so you have them to thank for me starting out my sermon with Klingonese: lutvad vighojmoh jih batlh tuhmohghach je. From the best I can figure out, this renders something like I tell a story intended for honor and shame. But it is not just simply my fondness of Klingons or Star Trek that has me going this way; rather, it is because the concepts of honor and shame are vital to Klingon society as they were to 1 st century Palestine but are almost absent in our society. Before someone takes this to be a moral condemnation (or praise) on either end of the honor/shame involvement spectrum, moral qualification is not present in my statement; I am simply saying that honor/shame as it existed in 1 st century Jewish and Greco- Roman culture is almost the most foreign concept for us to deal with in the Biblical story. To aid in understanding what honor and shame were like in

2 the 1 st century we can use other cultures that share similar concepts of honor and shame, including Star Trek s Klingons. Very few people, from our cultural background today, see matters of shame and honor in either the Micah or the gospel reading. But they re there: shame is there in being one of the little clans 1 the least, insignificant, youngest actually all of which fall into the shame category, even though poor Bethlehem and the sub-clan of Ephrathah have no control over it. Maybe this is something that we really don t understand about shame: a lot of times, like being youngest or smallest, there is nothing that the shamed one can do about it. Being a teenager and even female again things really quite uncontrollable were shameful statuses for Mary, and so was the childless status coupled with age for Elizabeth. None of these conditions of shame teenager, female, childless are ones that we would consider shameful but they would have weighed heavily upon Mary and Elizabeth. Luke leaves us with an open question: Why does Mary go to visit Elizabeth? One answer to this, similar to that of the census in the beginning of the Christmas story, is that Luke gets Mary to Elizabeth s primarily to have John jump in Elizabeth s womb as a prenatal pointing to Jesus. I can buy that, but here s another thought Elizabeth s house is in a Judean town in the hill country 2 it s out in the boondocks; it s a place where Mary can go to hide. And, why would she want to do that? 1 Micah 5:2. 2 Luke 1:39.

3 Because of her shameful status a teenage girl, who may have been unfaithful to the man to whom her father had promised her still shameful, even though, at this point in Mary s pregnancy external signs would be negligible; in fact, we are only aware of Mary s pregnancy because, along with her, we have born witness to the Annunciation. Presumably this announcement that she would be the bearer of the Son of God should be good news, but she doesn t start by rejoicing instead she goes and hides out in the hill country, where no one can see her shame. The shame of Mary is something that we really don t get. This is where Klingons come into the picture. Let s think about Worf; after all, he s the primary Klingon character in both Star Trek: The Next Generation and Star Trek: Deep Space Nine because he has the distinction of being the first and only Klingon to ever serve in Starfleet and it s probably a good idea that he is serving with the humans in Starfleet, because several times he runs amok with the Klingon leadership and is dishonored. In Klingon culture, his entire family shares in this dishonor; his family s property and possessions are ceased by the government, but worse, no Klingon will even acknowledge him his name is not spoken, and none are even willing to be on the same ship (or space station) as he s on. He becomes worse than a nobody. As a Klingon, his only possible recourse out of dishonor would be partially dishonorably suicide. But Worf has a different recourse he goes into hiding by going on with his life in the Federation as a Starfleet officer. His brother, Kern, who shares in his dishonor however, has no place to hide; it eventually destroys his life, completely.

4 So, how does one become redeemed? Worf and his brother Kern first redeem themselves by providing political and military support to the new leader. But eventually Worf turns against this new leader, and is again dishonored. Worf s second redemption Kern is no longer in the picture comes with killing that leader, and then making Martok, a friend of his, the chancellor; however, this relationship breaks down too and we re left hanging but we re also left with the firm conviction that Worf is an honorable man (though maybe not an honorable Klingon) because what he does is for the greater good, whatever the personal consequences to his honor. Unlike Worf, neither Mary, Elizabeth nor even the village of Bethlehem and its insignificant sub-tribe Ephrathah exist in a place of power close enough to have a power broker declare them to no longer be in shame, and to give them honor. Well at least as far as worldly power. However, they are close to another power God; oddly enough in God s on-going upending, Mary, Elizabeth and Bethlehem find themselves in God s mercy, and, through that mercy, God restores their honor (and does so a lot better and more permanently than Gowron). What was once shamed, is elevated to a position of honor. From the subtribe of Ephrathah and the village of Bethlehem came David; yes, while the Davidic line would become ensnared in dirty politics, there is an ongoing hope that they might again realize that they came from the little people and maybe this is realized in Joseph. Elizabeth s primary cause of shame was that she had not had children, but now, in her advanced age, God has reversed her

5 shame, and she will gain honor by bearing a son. And, this son will not be an ordinary child; already in his prenatal state, he s pointing toward the one who will come after him Jesus. Which gets us to Mary s honor: she too will gain honor by bearing a son, whom Joseph will adopt as his own overcoming her disgrace by having an out-of-wedlock pregnancy. But more than that, Mary s honor will grow long after her death as the, the God-bearer, and even, in some traditions, as semi-divine. Honor for all the dishonored is restored. But here is where it might also be helpful to consider Mary from a different perspective than the honor/shame system especially being as we neither live in that social structure nor are we in a position to become the God-bearer. Mary s ultimate value (and why she s still important for us today) is not to be found in her honor or dishonor, but in her faithful obedience to God s word however outlandish it may have seemed. Throughout history, there were questions of God s promises: Sarah laughed at the message the she and Abraham would have a child in their old age; 3 Zechariah did not believe Gabriel when he was told that he and Elizabeth, also barren and in their old age, would have a child. 4 But Mary, like Hannah before her, 5 responded differently to Gabriel s announcement that she too would have a child: Let it be to me according to your word (Luke 1:38) a faith-filled response to an unlikely promise. This is our challenge of faith as well the promises we receive through Baptism, 3 Genesis 18: Luke 1: Samuel 2:1-10.

6 through the Lord s Supper, though the Incarnation of the Word made flesh, his life, his death and his resurrection are all unlikely promises. You are a child of God, not of the flesh but by the promise of God through the waters of Baptism; you are forgiven all of your sins in the promise of the bread and wine; you are promised honor and everlasting life through the death and the resurrection of the one whose birth we await today with eager longing. lutvad vighojmohta jih batlh tuhmohghach je; I have accomplished telling a story intended for honor and shame and maybe in the process arrived at honor and shame being not as black and white, not as clearly defined, as they may sometimes seem. After all, what may appear to be a dishonorable or shameful situation may, from a different perspective, turn out to be actually be honorable and faithful. Glory be to the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit, enlightening, strengthening and saving us today and forevermore. Amen.