Sent to Reconcile

Luke 1:5-25

November 29, 2015 • Mount Pleasant UMC

My first trip to the Holy Land was in 1995, and on that particular journey, we had a “free day” during which we could explore whatever we wanted to in Jerusalem. So a friend and I hopped in a cab to go visit the Shrine of the Book. We wanted to see the Dead Sea Scrolls, which, as many of you may know, are a set of Biblical and other scrolls uncovered in the desert around the Dead Sea nearly seventy years ago now. A lot of the scrolls are in small pieces, and it’s taken decades to identify many of them, to piece some of them back together, but one of the real treasures in that archaeological find is a complete scroll of the book of Isaiah. It is the oldest copy known to exist, nearly 1100 years older than any previously held copy. So my friend and I, both being archaeology nerds, wanted to see the Isaiah scroll. However, when you enter the Shrine, you don’t just go straight to that scroll. There are numerous exhibits and explanations of what the scrolls mean, why they are significant and how some of the broken pieces were put back together. You are led along a path where you are educated and prepared, then you come down the hallway and see, in the center of the room, the grand Isaiah scroll. It is amazing to see, but I don’t know that I would have appreciated it as much had I not been adequately prepared (cf. Wright, Luke for Everyone, pgs. 6).

We all know that we’re headed toward Christmas. Some stores have had Christmas items in stock since July, and certainly since before Halloween this year! But now that Thanksgiving is past, we are rushing headlong toward the big day. And yet, the church comes along and says, “Wait a second. We need to be prepared if we’re really going to celebrate and understand what it’s all about.” So we have this four-week season of preparation, a season we call Advent, that’s meant to slow us down, to educate and prepare our hearts so that, when we get to December 25, we are in the right frame of mind and heart. Much of the world arrives at Christmas exhausted; it’s my prayer that, in these next four weeks, you’ll find your heart and mind renewed so that Christmas means more than ever this year.

As we walk together through Advent, we’re going to be asking what it means that Jesus was “Sent.” That theme is really taken from John 17:18, a prayer Jesus prayed on the last night of his life. In that verse, Jesus says to the Father, “As you sent me into the world, I have sent them into the world.” The “them” is us, you and me, Jesus’ followers. He has sent us into the world, he says, but he sends us the same way the Father sent him. Into the midst of the junk of this world, the Father sent his Son. Into the mess and the muck, Jesus was sent—and, according to Jesus, so are we. If we’re going to know how we’re to go into the world, how we’re being sent, we should first figure out why God the Father sent Jesus into the world. So for the next few weeks, we want to look at several aspects of Jesus’ being sent into the world. We’ll focus on how he was sent to liberate, to love, to save and to change everything. But this morning, we’re going to begin with an old priest in the Temple in Jerusalem, where he learns that God the Father is sending his son to reconcile.

Luke’s Gospel begins before the beginning. Like that museum exhibit, Luke gently prepares his readers for what is to come by telling them first not about a supernatural birth, not about angels in the sky, but about a birth that, while happening in the “normal” way, is still a miracle. He begins with a husband and a wife, Zechariah and Elizabeth, who lived in a dark and difficult time. Everyone who first read Luke’s Gospel would only have to hear the words, “in the time of Herod,” to feel a chill run down their spine. Herod was not a nice man; in fact, he was beyond “not nice” and more in the “monster” category (Card, Luke: The Gospel of Amazement, pg. 37). Herod had been in power since 37 BC. He had murdered both of his brothers-in-law, three of his sons, his favorite wife Miriamne, and her mother because he suspected all of them of plotting against him. He had no problems being brutal if it advanced his own career. Caesar Augustus is said to have remarked that it was safer to be Herod’s pig than his son. Talk about a world that’s broken, messed up, a junk heap. It was a dark and brutal time.

And yet, in the midst of such times, one thing that brought the people comfort and hope was their rituals, acting out their beliefs. So worship continued onward at the Jerusalem Temple, led by the priests, one of whom was named Zechariah. He was one of approximately 18,000 priests at the time, divided into twenty-four divisions, all of whom each served a week at the Temple twice a year. When they were there in service, they drew lots to decide who would offer the incense on the altar, and with so many, the chances of any one priest being given that honor were slim. Some might live their entire lives and never have the honor of offering the incense, but on this particular day, Zechariah is chosen. This is the greatest day of his life. He would be the one to enter the Holy of Holies, by himself, and perform the ritual while the people stood outside and prayed. It is literally a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity, but it’s also a moment that will change everything Zechariah thought he knew about his life. It’s an even greater day than he first thought (cf. Card 37; Bock, NIV Application Commentary: Luke, pg. 48).

So Zechariah is in the Holy of Holies, going about his business, when suddenly he sees an angel standing to the right side of the altar. By the way, when you see details like that in the story, you know it’s from an eyewitness account. Only Zechariah himself would have known exactly where the angel was standing. The angel tells Zechariah that he and his wife will have a son, even though, as Luke has already told us, they were “very old” and Elizabeth is barren. Being barren in that culture was not just an unfortunate circumstance. Childless women were mocked. It was understood that, if you didn’t have children, it was because there was some sin you have committed. No matter how devout you might appear on the outside, a lack of children told everyone all they needed to know. God was obviously punishing you for something (Card 37; Wright 6). So Zechariah enters the Holy of Holies and there receives a message from an angel: God is not punishing you, Zechariah. Don’t listen to them. Rather, God has been preparing them for something even greater. God has something in mind for them, and even though for them it involved a child, that’s not always the case. Even when life doesn’t work out the way you planned or wanted, God still has something in store for you, even though it may take until you’re “very old” to know what it is!

So Zechariah is told he and Elizabeth are going to have a son. They will be the oldest parents in the maternity ward and Medicare will pick up the tab! But, more than that, their son’s life will have a purpose: he is to prepare the way for the messiah, for the Lord. The angel, Gabriel, says it this way: “He will bring back many of the people of Israel to the Lord their God. And he will go on before the Lord, in the spirit and power of Elijah, to turn the hearts of the parents to their children and the disobedient to the wisdom of the righteous—to make ready a people prepared for the Lord” (1:16-17). All throughout that promise the angel makes is this theme: both John and Jesus are coming so that reconciliation can take place. Parents and children, the people and God, disobedient and righteous, one person to another—Jesus is being sent to reconcile.

So what does that mean? We hear lot of talk in certain corners these days about “reconciliation,” but people seem to have a lot of different ideas about what that would look like. Some folks think it means, “Can’t we all just get along?” For some, reconciliation means ignoring very real differences, and that’s true on an interpersonal scale as well as an international one. For others, reconciliation in your life has always meant just giving in, giving up, letting the other person get their way. It may leave a bad taste in your mouth because of that. But the word itself comes from two old Latin words that literally mean “to bring together again.” So we use it often in terms of restoring friendly relations, say, between two nations or two organizations. We use it in terms of settling something—so we talk about “reconciling” our bank statement or “reconciling” a dispute. And we use it in terms of making two seemingly incompatible things somehow compatible, such as when people talk about “reconciling” their faith with their job, or when students talk about “reconciling” their Sunday School lessons with what they are taught in science class. So there are a lot of different ideas about reconciliation; if we’re going to use it to refer to John and to Jesus, though, what does it mean Biblically? Well, it’s sort of a combination of many of those aspects. When the Bible talks about reconciling, it’s referring to two (or more) things that have been broken that need to be mended, healed (cf. VanYperen, Making Peace, pg. 200). “Someone or something will be brought back, and things will be made right” (Acevedo, Sent, pg. 19). Biblically, reconciliation has to do with healing—physical, emotional, spiritual—broken things being made whole, broken lives being mended, broken hearts being shown the way home.

So who wants reconciliation? Who is longing for reconciliation? Just think about the Christmas story as we have it in Luke and Matthew. There’s a childless couple who have been made fun of in their community, a devout couple who wants, above everything else, to serve God. They long for reconciliation with their community. He’s a priest who doubts the word of God; he needs reconciliation with his Lord and it will come through nine months of silence while he waits for the birth of his son. In essence, God is saying to Zechariah, “Be still for a while and watch me work” (cf. Bock 50). Not too far from Jerusalem, there’s a broken-hearted fiancée named Joseph who thought Mary was the one for him, but when he finds out she is pregnant, he determines to divorce her. This couple needs reconciliation. There are shepherds outside of the little town of Bethlehem, outcasts in their society, working the night shift. They aren’t even allowed to come into worship because of their occupation. Their needs for reconciliation are many-layered. And there’s a power-hungry king sitting in Jerusalem who will do most anything and kill most anyone to remain on the throne. He needs reconciliation to most everyone. There isn’t anyone in this story who isn’t longing, on some level, for reconciliation.

And, by that same measure, there isn’t anyone in our stories today who isn’t longing, on some level, for reconciliation. The couple who divorced years ago but still can’t seem to get past the hurt and the anger. The single mother who works the night shift and puts herself through school during the day just so that she can provide a better future for her child. The family members who can’t even remember what the fight that drove them apart was all about. The liberal and the conservative. The Republican and the Democrat. The friend you thought you could trust. The boss that used your talents and then “downsized” you. Or that thing you did that you just can’t forgive yourself for. You know in your head that God has forgiven you, but you don’t really believe it. Who is longing for reconciliation? Everyone. There isn’t a person in the world who hasn’t experienced some level of brokenness and lives in need of reconciliation. And the good news of Advent is this: Jesus was sent to reconcile. He comes to heal the brokenness of our world.

One of the things I notice about the Christmas story is that no one is really talking about their brokenness. Every person in the story, as told by Luke and Matthew, are just going about their business. The only one who gets close to revealing the brokenness in his life is Joseph, when he, out of his hurt, decides to divorce Mary (cf. Matthew 1:19). But, just like us, no one’s talking about it. Zechariah has gotten used to being the broken, old, childless man. And then the angel shows up when he is working. In the midst of an ordinary day filled with an extraordinary opportunity, an angel named Gabriel, one who normally stands in the presence of God (1:19), is sent to share good news with this aged priest. And what is the first thing the angel says? “Do not be afraid, Zechariah” (1:13). Even before he tells Zechariah his prayer has been heard, he asks him—commands him, even—not to be afraid. Undoubtedly, an angel showing up would cause us to have a certain measure of fear, or at least it always does in the Bible. The artistic representations we have of smiling figures with soft, feathery wings is probably not even close to what an angel looks like. The television versions on “Touched By An Angel” aren’t close either. None of those images cause the kind of fear we get in the Bible. Seeing an angel is a fearsome experience (cf. Card 38), but I don’t think it’s just the sight of the angel that scares Zechariah. Perhaps he’s also remembering a previous encounter with the divine presence that the prophet Isaiah had centuries before, an encounter that cause Isaiah to cry out, “Woe to me! I am ruined!” (Isaiah 6:5). When God shows up, or even when God’s representative shows up, we are ruined, or as it’s translated in an earlier version, we are undone. All the ways we’ve covered over our brokenness and hidden it from others, all the ways we’ve masked our need for reconciliation are out in the open. God sees it all. There’s no hiding from his presence, and it causes us to fear. That’s why an angel always greets a human being with the words, “Do not be afraid.” In fact, I’m told (I haven’t counted them myself) that this phrase appears in the Bible 365 times—once for every day of the year. “Do not be afraid!” The one who is coming will bring reconciliation, so you won’t need your carefully crafted cover-ups any longer! There is no need for fear!

So where might Jesus be working today to bring reconciliation? Well, the only one who can really answer that for your life is you. Where is the place of deepest brokenness in your life right now, today? I want to suggest just a couple of ways Jesus was sent to reconcile, but there are likely other areas in your own life where reconciliation is needed, and Jesus was sent to bring healing to that brokenness, too. First of all, Jesus was sent to heal broken relationships, all sorts of relationships. Husbands and wives in conflict. Bosses and employees who have different goals. Friends who see things differently. Politicians who disagree on public policy. Denominations who approach the Gospel differently. There are as many paths to broken relationships as there are people in the world. And while it’s somewhat understandable that relationships get broken in the world—after all, there’s not a lot that unifies people in the world at large—what boggles my mind is how broken relationships get within the church. Jesus was sent to reconcile, and he sends us to reconcile as well. As the Father sent him, so he sends us. The mission he had we are to have as well, and that includes reconciliation in relationships.

One of the real blessings of my life has been to be in two different pastor’s prayer groups in different cities, including Terre Haute. Early on in my ministry, we had a pastor’s prayer group that met that included every variety of Christian you might hope to find. We had Methodists and Presbyterians and independent Christian and Mennonite and Disciples of Christ and Evangelical Free and Southern Baptist and Nazarene and even, occasionally, a Lutheran pastor and a Catholic priest. You can imagine we might have had some lively theological and doctrinal discussions! We didn’t always agree with each other, but we found reconciliation in Christ. I remember one particularly lively discussion over some minute point of belief, every person defending their point of view, when one of my friends spoke up and said, “You know, we haven’t solved this matter in 2,000 years of church history, and we’re probably not going to solve it today. Let’s pray.” He was right, and it was faith in Jesus Christ and a commitment to pray with and for each other that bound us together, allowed us to be in relationship even though we often disagreed. In the spirit of Jesus, we sought to live out reconciliation among the churches. My first week here, as I attended the pastor’s prayer meeting that happens here at Mount Pleasant, I emailed one of those friends from that earlier appointment and said, “I’ve finally found another group like the one we had there.” There is a sweet spirit when God’s people take reconciliation seriously and come together.

Now, we could spend a whole sermon on reconciling relationships but Jesus gives us the quick guide in Matthew 18. I encourage you to read though that passage, but basically it says that we need to deal personally with brothers and sisters who have hurt us. If that doesn’t result in reconciliation, we should take a neutral party with us and attempt reconciliation again. And if that doesn’t work, we’re given permission to share it with “the church,” which doesn’t necessarily mean the whole congregation, as in those days “the church” would have been the equivalent of our LifeGroups or small groups. But Jesus’ basic message is this: with prayer and patience, pursue reconciliation and seek restoration. Biblically, the goal of reconciliation is always restoration, making the broken pieces whole again (cf. VanYperen 200). Jesus was sent to make relationships like new.

Jesus was also sent to reconcile our broken relationship with the world, and one of the ways that brokenness shows up especially this time of year is in our obsession with stuff. We might even say we have a broken relationship with Christmas. We know it’s unlikely Jesus was born in December; he was probably born in the spring. But the early church chose this time of year because it’s the darkest time of the year, and it’s the time of year we most need the light to break through. The Romans had a festival celebrating the lengthening of the days, “the festival of the unconquered sun,” and it’s possible the church “baptized” this date and turned it into a festival for Jesus’ birth. But the point is that Christmas is celebrated because Jesus was sent to us as the light of the world. Yet through the centuries, Christmas has become something else. It’s become about spending. I have lost count of how many emails I have gotten in the last week telling me I need to spend more and more and more money and buy stuff in order to celebrate Christmas—or “the holidays.” And many obediently do it. We wander up and down the aisles at Wal-mart looking for that thing to give to the person who has everything. And we buy stuff and give stuff we don’t need because our relationship with stuff is broken. Several years ago, Mike Slaughter, the pastor of Ginghamsburg United Methodist Church, wrote a book with a jarring title: Christmas Is Not Your Birthday. He tells his congregation that every year, reminding them that buying gifts for each other or themselves sort of misses the point. Christmas is Jesus’ birthday, so we ought to ask what sort of gift might make Jesus happy. Since then, for several years, in our family we have tried to make a gift to a mission project equal to what we give each other. I’ve come to believe that a gift for Jesus’ birthday that might make him happy is clean water for a village in Africa, or medical supplies for a refugee camp, or food for a child in Terre Haute who goes hungry on the weekends. Some years giving that gift has been easier to do than others, and I’m not saying that’s what you have to do, but doing something like that, for me, is helping heal my broken relationship with the stuff of this world. Jesus was sent to reconcile our broken relationship with the world.

And, ultimately, Jesus was sent to reconcile our broken relationship with God. John, we are told in today’s passage, was sent with the mission of bringing people back to God. Israel, God’s people, had strayed. They had periods of faithfulness and unfaithfulness, but now God was working to bring the people—all people—back to himself. How he was going to do that wasn’t clear at the time of John’s birth, and it wasn’t going to happen the way most people thought it would. Many in that day thought God would send someone to save them from the Romans, to re-establish Israel as an independent nation, to give them political power. This whole set of expectations had developed and had become deeply entrenched in the religious life of Israel at this time. But God was sending Jesus to be a savior who would not save them from the Romans but from sin. Jesus was coming to give his life so that people could be reconciled to God. You see, up to that point, the people had to continually make sacrifices to pay for their sins. In fact, that’s part of what Zechariah was doing in the Temple, offering a sacrifice for the people’s sins. “The wages of sin is death,” and when the people sinned, when they went against God’s way for their life, a death had to occur. The sacrificial system had developed around helping the people reconcile their lives with God. Jesus came to give his life in our place. He came and lived a sinless life, then willingly offered himself as the payment for our sin, for those times when we have broken our relationship with God. Jesus came to be the healer, the reconciler, the one who took our place. And he still offers that reconciliation to any who want it. He won’t force his way into our lives, but for the person who first turns toward him he will be the reconciler. That’s evident even in the moment John’s birth is announced; the angel chooses the very moment when the people are admitting and recognizing their need for cleansing from sin, for reconciliation with God (cf. Bock 49). John is being sent to reconcile, and so too would Jesus be.

He brings reconciliation in all sorts of ways, but being United Methodists, we shouldn’t be surprised when he even uses a meal to make it happen. It was quite a few years ago, and we were in another part of the state driving home from some event when I happened to mention that we were near where a friend of mine lived. This friend and I had, for a variety of reasons, not spoken for several years. Both of us had said and done hurtful things, and to be honest, I had pretty much given up on the friendship. But not Cathy. In fact, when I mentioned that we were near their home, Cathy suggested making a phone call to see if we could meet for dinner. As I was reluctant to call, Cathy took her phone out and made the call herself, set up the meal and we were on our way. I was quite reluctantly on my way. I didn’t want to go to dinner, but we did and over a meal of hamburgers, fries and ice cream, a friendship was mended. In the years since, that friendship has continued to grow but it might never have happened if we hadn’t taken the time, around a table, to pursue reconciliation. And that wouldn’t have happened if Cathy hadn’t pushed the issue. And that wouldn’t have happened if Jesus hadn’t been sent to reconcile. It seems so much easier to just ignore the issue, but in reality that brokenness will continue to eat at us and wound our spirit.

So let me ask you this morning, as we prepare to go to prayer: where is there brokenness in your life this morning? Where do you need reconciliation? Are you reconciled with God? If not, this morning is as good a time as any to make that relationship right, and we can do that during our prayer time this morning. Or maybe you need to spend some time during Advent reconsidering your relationship with stuff, with the world and the messed up ways the world has taken over Christmas. Advent is a time to reflect, to pull back, to refresh your focus before the big day. Or maybe you need to reconcile with a friend. Maybe you need someone to pick up the phone for you and schedule a dinner. I’m here to tell you: there is healing power in burgers and ice cream! Maybe, as we pray, you want to spend some time listening for the reason Jesus was sent to reconcile in your life. And to remember that as he was sent, so he sends us. We, too, are sent to reconcile, to heal broken places, to deliver the gift of hope at Christmas. Let’s pray.