Speaker 1: So even while there are limits to how the story starts, more is what we get at Christmas. A baby in utero grows. God on the margins seeks shepherds, and from one angel, we get a skifle. So musicals. Admittedly, I don't love them.
I find the interruptions of songs to the stories just a little bit aggravating in musicals, like The Sound of Music, all the singing, Grease, Les Miserables. There's just like a lot of melodrama in these musicals, like excessively tugging at my emotions so I will feel things. Now, musical lovers, please don't come for me because every once in a while, a musical sneaks past my prejudice and I will find myself enraptured. That's why I love our Advent series this year. Just when you think you are decided about what the Christmas story means, here it comes all over again at the start of a new church year.
And we manage always to find a new layer of meaning, a melody of this baby's arrival sneaks its way into our suspicious, jaded, little hearts. So in the first week of the series, we let Mary's Magnificat rock us out of our lethargy to remind us of a political vision of a world made right. One where the wealthy and the powerful do not always win the day, but the poor and the hungry, every needy one amongst us is filled with good things. And then last week, we let Zechariah's song find us after his say, ten months of forced silence. Remember the priestly couple Zechariah and Elizabeth had waited so long to be remembered by God in their old age.
And so when their boy John the Baptist is born, Zechariah's silence gives way to a song we call the Benedictus. And that song is decidedly more religious than political. Zechariah sings about the freedom that comes when God looks favorably upon God's people and redeems them. Today, we are taking this show on the road, packing up and getting out of town to the fields where shepherds tend their flocks by night. Get ready for the Gloria.
But first, let us pray. Loving God, we take a moment to consider maybe some advent joy that we are grateful for. The children in this community, the music in our lives that moves us, the people we love whom we would be lost without. And we simply say thank you for these sweet joys. We know that this season can also be a struggle.
So for those who have been feeling the heaviness of the darkness, noticing a familiar haunting in the holidays, or just acutely aware of what feels so broken in the world. We pause right now to settle into this present moment and maybe take a deep breath, And we trust that you draw near. Advent God, as we come to another familiar story today, I want you sing over us something new. Amen. So if you see me driving around the city this winter in my 2009 City Jetta, that is twice, I have shouted out my rusty old car this Advent and I really don't know why.
It's just amusing to me. But if you see me driving around the city, you will likely see my mittens flapping to music you can't hear. I do a little bit of this. I do a little bit of this. I am even conducting a car choir.
And the reason is that I have been playing two albums on repeat this winter. As I mentioned a couple of weeks ago, the new Rosalia album looks so good. But the second album is called The Boy Who Played the Harp by the British rapper, Dave. This album features one of my favorite artists, James Blake. It is spiritual.
It is introspective, and it has just surprised me. But here's what I think is really going on in my car as I listen to these two albums. They are putting into form emotions and expressions I didn't even realize I was experiencing. Put another way by one of my favorite thinkers about faith and art, Jeremy Bagby. He says this, art reminds us that in fact, the world always exceeds our grasp and perception.
Art gives us physical objects that can embody the world's excess of meaning with particular potency. And as I read this quote, it makes more sense of musicals for me. As someone who hasn't always appreciated them, I guess all they're really doing is breaking into song when ordinary prose fails. Maybe that's it. We break into song when our stories can't contain all of our fear or our awe.
So in our third part of the Advent the musical series, we'll talk about a musical interruption in the story of the shepherds out tending their flocks by night. It's about ordinary shepherds, problem with heavenly angels, the Gloria, and showstopper. So we head to Luke two beginning in verse eight. And there were shepherds living out in the fields nearby keeping watch over their flocks at night. An angel of the Lord appeared to them, the glory of the Lord shone around them and they were terrified.
So the start of Luke two, Jesus is born. Sorry for skipping ahead in our Advent journey. We will circle back on Christmas Eve. But still, what do you know? The first folks to hear the news of Jesus's birth aren't the religious leaders.
While this story is intensely Jewish and they're not the secular rulers, while Luke has been very careful to place the story of Jesus's arrival into its Greco Roman context. No. The first people to be told about Jesus's birth are mud caked, dung smelling, weather worn trades guys. When it comes to the shepherds, there are at least a couple of layers to understand their part in the story. One is that they are lowly.
They're ordinary. They're marginal men and possibly women doing menial work. The second is that Jesus is linked to King David through Joseph's family line. Remember David was pulled into power from his ordinary job as a shepherd out in the fields making music for his sheep. What I want you to notice today is the juxtaposition of these ordinary David linked shepherds with something extraordinary.
As soon as the scene is established, it's interrupted not by wolves or marauders or mothers calling for their sons at dinner time. The pastoral scene is interrupted by an angel of the Lord surrounding shepherds with divine glory or doxa in Greek, meaning a surreal radiance, a dazzling luster. It completely overtakes them and these tough guys are terrified. And the ordinariness of the night gives way to rapture. And the thing I love the most about this scene is that the shepherds were not looking for any of this.
I mean, sure, maybe they longed for their lives to sparkle with a little more meaning, but as far as we know, it was just another night out in the fields. They do nothing to make themselves worthy of this divine announcement. So let me ask you, how hard do you work or feel like you're supposed to work to bring God's presence closer to you? Do you feel completely overwhelmed and absorbed by your day to day ordinary existence? And do you feel some shame that you haven't quite tweaked the conditions of your life so that God will show up for you when you get it just right.
Maybe the joy in this third week of Advent is this, like shepherds who hear the birth announcement first, your ordinariness is good enough for God. Like, seriously, maybe you don't have to try so hard. Let it be up to God to get your attention when you need to notice something new. But I know, I know, I know you. You want more.
You want a feeling that dazzles you in your connection to God. So let's turn to the angel. But the angel said to the shepherds, do not be afraid. I bring you good news that will cause great joy for all the people. Today in the town of David, a savior has been born to you.
He is the Messiah, the Lord. This will be a sign to you. You will find a baby wrapped in cloths lying in a manger. Now in one sense, we should have been ready for this. It's another annunciation, another announcement where a divine messenger pulls up to an unsuspecting normie and ushers in this surprising good news.
Zechariah got an annunciation, Mary got an annunciation, now these guys, they get one too. So you get your standard, don't freak out, and I promise you're gonna love this. The angel says this is for all the people. Only I wanna stop us right there because, well, reading the text it's kind of not. When Luke says all the people he actually means Israel.
Jumping back to Mary's Magnificat in January, the God of Israel will look favorably on God's people redeeming them. If anything, Luke is even more particular narrowing on in on Israel's common people. Luke will go on to contrast the priests, the Sadducees, and Jewish elite with Jesus' preferred company. Common Jewish people. While we're at it, why stop there?
I think there are more ways that this text feels like it excludes us. Take the trifecta of proper nouns born in the city of David, a savior, Messiah, lord. And layered into these titles are deeply held Jewish and Hellenistic ideologies. In Hebrew thought, savior does so much more than just deal with sin. Savior is the word for the one who rescues Israel from slavery and exile and provides what's essential for their flourishing.
In the Greco Roman thought, a savior is the Roman emperor who has this special power over his subjects. The start of chapter two, we read that this is the time of Pax Augusta. So Luke is very much setting up that contrast. Messiah is the uniquely Jewish title in the mix. The root verb means to smear, to rub, or spread, which sounds like toast and jam, my favorite snack, but actually harkens to the ritual of anointing.
Anointing a king, a priest, and even a prophet with this consecrated oil on their head. Finally, we get the Greek title Lord. And Luke uses this one two hundred and ten times and Paul's letters beat him with 275 references. And you likely recognize it for the English translation of Yahweh occurring over 9,000 times in the Old Testament. Lord is doing double duty.
It's also a title for emperors. On the one hand, like, wow, these names mean so much to first century folks. But where exactly does that leave us? Like, what's a savior, messiah, Lord to you? How do those names speak to your emptiness, your lack, your struggle?
Let's take one more step with the story. The angel says that there will be a sign. It's this simple. When the angel said, is true is true. The shepherds will run and find a child wrapped in ordinary cloth lying in a manger.
And snuck in here is just a simple fulfillment to an almost missed prophecy. Go see for yourselves, a very special babe is born. So to recap, here's how outside the story we are. It's a story at least at the start meant for all people, not really all people, just common Jewish people. It's a story with arrival, only the titles given in this angelic announcement don't really touch down so perfectly in our world.
They're Hebrew titles for God, Greek titles for emperors. And the sign isn't something we'll ever see with our own eyes. We can imagine it but we didn't see it. We didn't ask around town in our coveralls until we stumbled upon a baby hardly looking like a king dozing in of all places a manger. So tell me, how do we fit into this story?
Here's my contention. The problem with these heavenly angels is that I don't know if their message reaches us without some kind of ongoing participation, a willingness to fling yourself into the story even if you haven't always felt welcome to it. Call it faith. Call it a hot take in theology. Call it how you find the words to pray with your kids.
Every one of us needs to decide how the Christmas story still speaks to us. What announcement of hope, peace, joy, and love arrives with real good news for you. What names do you use for God to address your need? What sign can you trace of what is true? Just because a story starts a certain way doesn't mean it always stays that way.
Seeking out the Christ child means trusting that there could be more, more answers to your questions, more names for God than you could ever count, more ways that heaven confronts us on earth. So even while there are limits to how the story starts, more is what we get at Christmas. A baby in utero grows. God on the margins seeks shepherds. And from one angel, we get a sky full.
Suddenly, a great company of the heavenly host appeared with the angel praising God and saying, glory to God in the highest heaven and on earth peace to those on whom his favor rests. This is the third hymn in our Advent playlist, also known as Gloria in Excelsis Deo aka the angels we have heard on high song which was always my favorite to sing as a kid in the nativity play at Saint Wenceslas Parish in Gerald, Saskatchewan. Real mouthful there. I loved the way all of our voices, the good kids and the not always good kids sang through the melisma while crossing a full octave together. There have been debates about the Gloria for centuries.
Now ancient manuscripts lead us in two different directions here. And the question we get hung up on generation after generation is this, what is up with God's favor? These divine messengers sing beauty and radiance to God and peace on the earth for the occasion of the incarnation to those on whom God's favor rests. So does God's favor get restricted? Like capriciously dole it out if you've been nice and certainly hold it back if you've been naughty?
If that's the case, like people have read this text for centuries to underscore their side of the debate of who is in and who is out. Well, then what good is this baby if all he does is underscore what we already do? We play favorites. We assume our way is the right way. We give extra credit to those who are already good.
And we can resolve some of the textual problems here by taking very seriously the parallels in this song. And I will spare you the chiastic diagram I lovingly drew this week, but follow me here. Parallelism is so cool. Parallelism makes meaning from reverberation and reiteration. Meaning accumulates.
It grows with parallelism. So in the Gloria, the glory parallels peace as if beauty could ever be cut off from blessing. And heaven parallels the earth as if that divide ever mattered to the divine. And God parallels the people as if we could ever be separated from our source. So when you ask the Gloria, what people are favored?
You need to remember that the answer is already in the story. God starts with the lowly, gives them time to grow, seeks the margins, sings over ordinary people, finds us when we are flat on our back staring up at the night sky. But after that, God is coming for you. If you are riding high, insulated in power and control, pretty sure you don't need a deity greater than yourself, avoiding people who aren't like you. The Gloria is loud and spacious and able to pull you in because it is a song for everyone.
Because everything in heaven above and the earth below circles and circles and circles around the living God who does not stay away but pulls on flesh and bleeds red blood to show us divine union with all that God has made. God favors every part of you that feels forgotten or the parts of you that have forgotten God. In this baby, the shepherds seek and find every one of us when we need it most gets our glorious humanity back. When I don't know what to do with angel stories, which kinda feels like all the time, I watch a movie. The 1987 film, which often makes lists like the best 100 films in world cinema, it's called Wings of Desire.
This Wim Wenders film tells the story of angels in the sky over a divided Berlin. And they move through the city witnessing the inner life of humans offering comfort but never altering the action. In the movie, it narrows in on one angel who decides to give up the black and white world of angelic existence so that he can experience all the colorful sensations of what it means to be a human. So when his BFF angel buddy asks him if he's really ready to let go of being an angel and just become a man, he says this, yes. I'm ready to invent a story of myself.
I want to transform what my timeless downward look has taught me and learn to bear a harsh sight, a brisk shout, a sour smell. I have been on the outside long enough, absent long enough, I want to enter into the history of the world. Art in song and film, painting and poetry reminds us, as Jeremy Begbie says, that the world always exceeds our grasp and perception. So what do we do? We make things.
Gospels and nativities, sweaters and songs, families and holiday rituals. We do our best to cram this wild existence into something that we can hold because glory is never meant to be contained. It erupts in the night sky. It explodes like dynamite in our hearts. It charges the spaces between us with so much love that we can't help but open up to awe.
In Luke two fifteen, the angels they leave. They go back to wherever it is they came from and shepherds, they take off running. They run toward Bethlehem to see the thing that has happened which the Lord told them about And I don't think for one minute that the shepherds wanna trade places with angels because it turns out that there is enough of what God wants for all of us packed into our simple, ordinary lives for them to explode with glory. I think that's what Christmas teaches us. Let us pray.
Loving God, as the shepherds out in the field, may we sink into our ordinariness in this third week of Advent, a week marked by joy, both ordinary and extraordinary kind. Help us to discern what it might mean for us to go about our everyday lives as if there could be something so dazzling overhead. Announcing your inexhaustible peace. I wanna pray a special blessing on all the kids in our lives. Bless their innocence, their curiosity, and their closeness to you Jesus.
We see that especially at this time of year. Spirit of the living God present with us now Enter the places of our sadness, our ache, and our fear, and heal us of all that harms us. Amen.
Speaker 2: Hey. Jeremy here, and thanks for listening to our podcast. If you're intrigued by the work that we're doing here at Commons, you can head to our website, commons.church, for more information. You can find us on all of the socials commonschurch. You can subscribe to our YouTube channel, where we are posting content regularly for the community.
Can You also join our Discord server. Head to commons.churchdiscord for the invite, and there you will find the community having all kinds of conversations about how we can encourage each other to follow the way of Jesus. We would love to hear from you. Anyway, thanks for tuning in. Have a great week.
We'll talk to you soon.