Take a minute to be shocked and alarmed by this:  The inconceivable, Almighty, All knowing, and Omnipresent God becomes conceived as an utterly powerless fetus, with zero brain activity, and confined to one solitary place in time and space, in an oppressed Judean Town in the hill country of Palestine, in the womb of a young Jewish peasant girl.

And now here is the microscopic God.  Here is the embryonic God.  Here is the God that is small enough to fit through a birth canal, small enough to fit within cradled arms, small enough to fit within humanity.  This is a mystery that angels still scratch their heads over.  Because, just as difficult it is to grasp how huge our God is, it’s also next to impossible to grasp how incredibly small our God is – how humble our God is.

But as soon as the shock and wonder wear off I immediately think, “Well, what good is this little God? I want the galaxy maker!  I want the human heart judger!  Now that God can really get stuff done around here.  I could really get some hope behind that God.”  But instead we get a year’s supply of God’s dirty diapers.

Now enter Mary’s song – the magnificat.  Remember that in St. Luke 2?

Somehow, I’m not sure how, but somehow, while Mary was separated from her embarrassed fiance and shipped off to her secluded cousin’s house, somehow she sang these words, “My soul magnifies the Lord.”  What a weird thing to say about God.  I’ve always thought it odd, “My soul magnifies GOD.”

A few years ago I got my little nephew a magnifying glass that electronically connects to a TV screen for Christmas.  It was amazing how close it brought us to whatever we put under it.  We could see with crystal clarity the fibers of the carpet and the dimpled peel of an orange, and the skeletons of dead bugs.  It was so fascinating that we played with it for hours.

When I thought about that magnifying device Mary’s song start to make sense.  Mary had to “magnify the Lord” because God was becoming so microscopic.  In order to look at an unplanned pregnancy in first century Judaism, which would have caused her to be shamed and ostracized by her entire community, hypothetically punished by death according to Jewish Law, and then to be able to say about that scandal, “From now until the end of time every generation of people will call me blessed”, rather than cursed…  Mary must have used magnifying glass.  In order to look at a year’s supply of dirty diapers and say, “God has brought down the powerful from their thrones, and lifted up the lowly; God has filled the hungry with good things, and sent the rich away empty”, one must use a magnifying glass.  In order to look at Jesus strung up between two thieves on an device meant for public humiliation, torture, and death and then say, ”Surely this man was the son of God”, one must use a magnifying glass.

That seems like a big jump to go from Christmas to Good Friday. They don’t seem to have too much to do with each other. But under the magnifying glass the incarnation and the crucifixion are no different.  For the sake of loving us, God becomes very small in the cradle, on the cross.  And this is what it looks like when God comes close:  humble and vulnerable.  That’s not what I would do about the world’s desperate hopes.  That’s not what I would do to bring about peace on earth.  But it’s what God is doing in Jesus Christ to bring about God’s dream for mending your family, your relationships, the environment, nations at war… and all of Creation.  Now that’s really difficult for me to see.  I need a whole new lens for Christmas.

God, as a generic distant galaxy creator who lives light years away is pretty easy to believe in.  Most the world believes in that big distant God.  But the little God, the Jesus-God, that one is next to impossible to believe in.

So here’s my Christmas prayer:

“Hey Big God,

if you are giving out presents this year, how about wrapping up some “little-God magnifying glasses” for all of us with poor “God-eye-sight”… I think I remember you calling it “the Holy Spirit” or something like that.  That would be great.  Thanks.”

Merry Christmas everyone.

In the cross, Jesus subverts all that we think is wise or powerful. Jesus says, “I hear that you are interested in power.  Here’s the clearest act of God’s power…  Not creating all that is seen and unseen.  Nope.  Not, taking down corrupt rulers and kingdoms.  Nope.  Not hurricanes and earthquakes and floods.  Not even close.  God’s power is revealed in one clear act – me hanging on a cross for you.  And I hear that you are interested in wisdom.  The clearest articulation of God’s wisdom is not captured in the vast science of nature, it’s not captured by the doctrines and scriptures of religion.  The clearest articulation of God’s wisdom is me hanging on a cross for you.”

The cross doesn’t ask us to say, “This really isn’t that foolish.  This makes a lot of good sense, you just got to know enough about theology.”  Because the extent to which we make the cross acceptable, dignified, beautiful, and no longer an offense to our wisdom is the extent to which we take control of the wisdom and power of God and use it for our own means.  Instead, the cross asks us to say, “Yep.  This is ridiculous.  So I wonder how God continues to break my arrogant heart and heal me all at once in the cross.”

Paul, with a little help from Eugene, describes this masterfully:

“The Message that points to Christ on the Cross seems like sheer stupidity to those hellbent on destruction, but for those on the way of salvation it makes perfect sense. This is the way God works, and most powerfully as it turns out. It’s written,

“I’ll turn conventional wisdom on its head,
I’ll expose so-called experts as sham.”

So where can you find someone truly wise, truly educated, truly intelligent in this day and age? Hasn’t God exposed it all as pretentious nonsense? Since the world in all its wisdom never had a clue when it came to knowing God, God in his wisdom took delight in using what the world considered dumb—preaching, of all things!—to bring those who trust him into the way of salvation.  While the religious clamor for miraculous demonstrations and non-religous go in for philosophical wisdom, we go right on proclaiming Christ, the Crucified. The religious treat this like an anti-miracle—and non-religious pass it off as absurd. But to us who are personally called by God himself—both religious and non-religious—Christ is God’s ultimate miracle and wisdom all wrapped up in one. Human wisdom is so tinny, so impotent, next to the seeming absurdity of God. Human strength can’t begin to compete with God’s “weakness.”

Take a good look, friends, at who you were when you got called into this life. I don’t see many of “the brightest and the best” among you, not many influential, not many from high-society families. Isn’t it obvious that God deliberately chose men and women that the culture overlooks and exploits and abuses, chose these “nobodies” to expose the hollow pretensions of the “somebodies”? That makes it quite clear that none of you can get by with blowing your own horn before God. Everything that we have—right thinking and right living, a clean slate and a fresh start—comes from God by way of Jesus Christ. That’s why we have the saying, “If you’re going to boast about someone, boast about the Lord Jesus.”

Read wisdom from the “Wisdom Potluck”

I distinctly remember the moment I realized that becoming the mission pastor of Church of the Beloved also meant that I was going to need to preach on a regular basis.  My heart sank, because, for some reason, preaching had not been a part of what I had imagined my pastoral role to be… facilitating creative worship – yes, networking together a relational community – yes, helping organize missional expressions in the neighborhood, like the Theology on Tap, like the Valentine’s Day party for the world, like the Artist’s Way group, like the Beloved Table down at the Edmonds Halloween party… all that stuff – yes, yes, yes! But preaching… no.  While most pastors consider preaching a given, I hadn’t even considered it until I dove headlong into church planting.  Why?  I don’t know.

Maybe it was because I had already heard hundreds, if not thousands of sermons in my over churched life, but perhaps only a handful of them had I considered valuable.  And rarely had I heard preaching that I regarded as honest, and engaging, and not manipulative, arrogant, or just plain crazy.  Or maybe it was because I had experienced the gospel in so many other ways… in the exploration of a multi-media labyrinth, in a powerful story portrayed by film, or in a broken down conversation with a friend.  I had given up on preaching and yet I was perplexed, because for the last two-thousand years the proclamation of the Gospel was central to the life of the Church… how is it that I knew better than the saints through the ages?

But then! I heard good preaching.  And it was different than what I thought good preaching was supposed to be like.  I realized that I had confused (and most of the time still confuse) the proclamation of the Gospel with sound ‘Biblical Teaching’.  I had thought the point of hearing a sermon was to learn – to aquiring knowledge about God. And in the quest for preachers to teach something new each week they would resort to parsing ancient greek, hebrew and sometimes even aramaic words,they would bring to light the lost meanings of historical contexts, or, if you’re really lucky, outline systematic theological doctrines.  So when I heard these sermons I would ask myself, “Did I learn anything new?  If I did, did I really care that I did?  And what does this shmoe know that I don’t know anyways?”

The moment I realized that I was going to need to preach I had the terrifying thought:  “Well, what do I know that my people don’t?  What wisdom do I have that they haven’t heard before?”  In those questions I felt the pressure of the academy on the Church.  Universities had trained the Pastors of the Church… and it showed: Churches looked like little lecture halls with all the seats facing towards the front of the class room where the main act was the forty-five minute talking head.

And not only had I confused the proclamation of the Gospel with “Biblical Teaching”, but I had also confused the proclamation of the Gospel with “Christian Moralism”.  And this is what passes for 90% of all sermons.  Sometimes it’s called “rules for chirstian living”, or “life application” or if you are cool, “following in the way of Jesus”, but the sermon follows the same simple recipe:
Ingredient #1: “What’s the problem?”
Ingredient #2: “What you can do about it.”

This is a classic recipe.  Almost every good book, film, or play is built on this simple equation:  First everything is idyllic, then tragedy strikes and then the hero or heroin must find a way to make things right.  And the recipe works, because it’s how we work.  It’s survival.  It’s instinctual.  It’s empowering.  And it really doesn’t matter if you are a conservative Christian or a liberal Christian.  The ingredient’s of the sermon might differ a little for each, but the recipe remains the same – just plug in different issues.

For conservative Christians the answer is pietism, complying to the accepted do’s and dont’s, and the assumption that the world would be fixed if we just got everybody on the same page about evangelism, prayer in schools, outlawing abortions and same sex unions.  This is how you ‘get good’.  This is what you can do about the problem.

For liberal Christians the answer is charity, activism, complying to the accepted do’s and dont’s, and the assumption that the world would be fixed if we just got everybody on the same page about peace and justice, environmentalism, and tolerance for diversity (except for those conservatives).  This is how you ‘get good’.  This is what you can do about the problem.  So get busy!

Please don’t hear me wrong.  I’m not making a value judgment about the morality of these morals at all. Ethics, activism, devotion, morality, learning, charity…  all of this is important.  I’m just saying, “It’s not the gospel.”  Because when preaching is set up by these two questions, “What’s the problem and what can I do about it?” the answer is always “my own determination, my own will to do better, my own ability to create a new future.”  But the Gospel is not about what I am doing about it, the Gospel is about what God is doing about it in Jesus Christ.  Now that can really preach!

And that is what I heard, when I first heard good preaching.  It was different than “Biblical Teaching” And it was different than “Christian Moralism”  It was was what St. Paul talks about when he says: “Religious people demand powerful signs and non-religious people look for wisdom, but we preach Christ crucified – and it’s stumbling block to the religious and foolishness to the non-religious, but to those whom God has called, both religious and non-religious people, Christ crucified is the power of God and the wisdom of God. Because the foolishness of Christ-crucified is wiser than our wisdom, and the weakness of Christ crucified is stronger than our strength.”

What we need most is not more Biblical Teaching, or to learn or understand things better.  What we need most is not more Christian Moralism, or to do or not do more things.  The goal of both is to cultivate our own goodness, not celebrate God’s grace in Jesus.  What we need most is for the Spirit of God to open us up in such a way that we enter the very Story of God and encounter the mystery of the God who dies at our own hands for our sake.  And, to our surprise, instead of this reality crushing us, it drives us into into the loving arms of God.  It sounds stupid, it sounds weak, it trips us up – but this is the power and wisdom of God.  This is the Good News of Jesus Christ.  This is the seed that produces fruit in our lives – like charity and activism and community and so on.  But it is fruit that comes from faith, and not from fear.  This is the Gospel that changed everything for Martin Luther and once again sparked a revolution of grace.  He called it the Theology of the Cross.

Most preaching is good news for good people.  Most preaching is hope for hopeful people.  But the Gospel is good news for all people, and hope for people who do not even have the capacity to hope.  When I think about preaching at you…  When I think about having to come up with new teachings every week, or about telling you how to be good, or even worse – how to vote… That makes my heart sink.  But when I think about proclaiming the Gospel to you: about reminding, both me and you, of the story of a God who loves us through death and beyond, who turns the shame of the cross into life and peace, whose Spirit gives us the faith that drives us to grace…  Now that, that can preach.  And that makes my heart sing.