Love in Flesh and Bone

Exploring the Christmas Mystery

Amy E. Richter, Joseph S. Pagano

• Publisher: Wipf and Stock
• Year: 2014
• Print ISBN:
  9781625642066
  9781498268141
• eBook ISBN:
  9781630872748
• Topic: Theology & Religion
• Subtopic: Christian Church

On the weekend of April 22, 2012 the St. Anne's Church website received thousands of visitors. That Sunday, in the New York Times Magazine, an article appeared about the Rev. Dr. Amy E. Richter competing in a physique competition. The strong reactions to the article got Richter and her husband and fellow clergyperson, the Rev. Dr. Joseph Pagano, thinking about the scandal of the Incarnation. The claim that God entered fully into our flesh-and-blood human existence makes some of us squeamish. And yet, this shocking claim is at the heart of the good news that in Christ God is with us no matter what. There is nothing that can happen to us--no pain, no humiliation, no anguish--that can separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord. In sermons for the seasons of Advent, Christmas, and Epiphany, Richter and Pagano proclaim the good news of the scandalous love of God in flesh and bone.

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Preparing Our Flesh to
See God in the Flesh

Sermons for Advent

First Sunday of Advent, Year C—Psalm 25:1–9

To you, O Lord, I lift up my soul;
my God, I put my trust in you;
let me not be humiliated,
nor let my enemies triumph over me.
Let none who look to you be put to shame;
let the treacherous be disappointed in their schemes.
Show me your ways, O Lord,
and teach me your paths.
Lead me in your truth and teach me,
for you are the God of my salvation;
in you have I trusted all the day long.
Remember, O Lord, your compassion and love,
for they are from everlasting.
Remember not the sins of my youth and my transgressions;
remember me according to your love
and for the sake of your goodness, O Lord.
Gracious and upright is the Lord;
therefore he teaches sinners in his way.
He guides the humble in doing right
and teaches his way to the lowly.
All the paths of the Lord are love and faithfulness
to those who keep his covenant and his testimonies. (NRSV)

God’s Paths

Amy E. Richter

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Knowing the path, the right path, is really important.

There is a mountain in Scotland that Joe and I have tried to climb twice. Its name is An Teallach, which means “the anvil” or “the forge.” Twice we have been pounded on the anvil. The mountain is made of a distinctive red stone that glows when the light is right. It’s not a technically difficult climb. It’s more of a slog—one foot in front of the other, over and over again, until near the summit, which is reached by traversing a narrow and spiny ridge with steep drop-offs to either side. But when you successfully cross the ridge and reach the summit, you can look out over the Scottish Highlands for miles and out to the sea. Or, so we’ve been told. We’ve not yet been to the summit ourselves.

We tried a few years ago. Despite gale force winds, we decided to try. We got near the top, but the winds were so strong they were actually lifting me off my feet and moving me before bumping me back onto solid ground. My sunglasses were ripped from my face. I feared the knot holding my windbreaker tied around my waist wouldn’t hold, or worse, that my backpack would become a sail and give the wind even more purchase to send me over the side of the mountain. We gave up on climbing in the fierce wind, and left the summit for another year.

Recently we went back. This time we were joined by Joe’s brother Rich. The three of us chose a day with less wind, but there was cloud cover on the peaks of all the mountains in the region. However, the Mountain Weather Information Service forecast predicted that by afternoon the cloud level would rise and leave the peaks clear, including the peak of An Teallach. We timed our attempt carefully.

Since much of the way is over rock, not a worn dirt trail, the path is marked by cairns, little piles of rock, placed every so often so you can look ahead and spot the direction of the path. We went up and up and up, on toward the thick white blanket that hid our goal. We got closer and closer, but saw no sign of cloud lift. We paused right beneath the cloud line, checking our watches, and decided to enter the cloud, still hoping it would lift as we ascended.

We climbed up into the cloud and were enveloped in thick, cool, moist white. Our visibility was limited to just twenty feet in front of us. All sense of our altitude vanished. We could only see the reddish rock beneath our feet. It was eerily quiet: no wind, no birds, just our boots crunching in the scree, small bits of gravel scrunching aside as we walked. We reached a plateau, but we had no idea which direction to go to end up firmly on the narrow spiny ridge. We paused again and leaned against a rocky outcropping while Rich checked his compass. We thought we knew which general direction must lead to the summit, but none of us knew the path.

It was about twenty degrees cooler in the cloud, a damp cold. If we became separated by more than a few yards, we would disappear from each other’s view. If we got separated, we might not be able to find one another again. It would be too easy to get lost or disoriented, or maybe stumble and fall. The white blanket and silence were unnerving, unsettling, and dangerous. We sat down, huddled close together, and ate the peanut butter sandwiches we had packed. Rich took a picture of Joe and me. We look like we are propped up against a fake background, as if someone cut out all the background scenery. After I started to shiver, we decided to give up for today, turn back, and live to return and try again another year.

Knowing the path is really important.

Show me your ways, O Lord, and teach me your paths.

Welcome to Advent, a time for resetting our course, recommitting ourselves to God’s paths, to acknowledging, through the grace of the rhythms of the church year, that we are all on a journey. There are many paths we can take. Some are life-giving and some are not. Some lead to wholeness and faithfulness, and some do not. Some look like paths, but turn out to be dead ends.

But God has not left us to wander through our lives aimlessly, or without direction, or without hope of reaching a worthy goal. God lays paths for us. God will teach us. Listen to the psalmist: “Show me your ways, O Lord, and teach me your paths . . . All the paths of the Lord are love and faithfulness to those who keep his covenant and his testimonies.” God will teach us, which is why it is important to do all these Advent actions: listen, watch, wait, pay attention.

In high school I ran the mile on the track team. I remember being at a meet when, in the boy’s mile race, one of the runners suddenly found himself way out in front of the rest of the pack. He didn’t come to the meet expecting to win the event. He didn’t have the fastest times. But there he was, giving it his all and finding himself yards ahead as the runners rounded the track to complete the third of four laps. He had the biggest smile on his face as he crossed the line that marked the end of the lap. And then he stopped, walked off the track, bent over with his hands on his knees, and started to catch his breath. He thought he was done. He thought he had won the race. And then he heard the gun signaling that the runners were now on their last lap. He hadn’t been paying attention, so he didn’t realize the race wasn’t over. He did not pace himself for the full four laps and so took the lead. However, quitting with one lap to go doesn’t win the race. At the real end of the race, one of the runners on our team didn’t realize he had completed the distance, and so he kept running. He got halfway around an extra lap before the coach got his attention and told him to stop, to save himself for his next race.

Pay attention. Listen for help. God does offer it. But to hear God’s help you may have to listen for longer than you thought. You may have another lap to run. You may need to slow down or stop and rest. You may have to learn a deep inner quietness in order to hear. Advent is a training time of sorts for quietness and attention. It is a time to allow ourselves, if we’re willing to take the opportunity, to listen deeply for God’s teaching and direction.

Show us your ways, O Lord, and teach us your paths.

God doesn’t just say, “Good luck, see you at the end.” God’s paths have markers along the way.

On hiking trails there are markers, like those cairns on An Teallach, like the markers people post on trees along wooded trails to let us know we’re on the right path. They’re called reassurance markers. Isn’t that great? On hiking trails, you don’t want a constant reminder that you are on a ready-made path. You don’t want to see every tree along the route with a marker. This is a walk in the woods, after all, and not the mall or a parking garage. But you don’t want to get lost, either. A well-placed reassurance marker is one placed just at those points where you start to wonder, “Are we still on the path? Is this the right way? Ah, there it is—the marker. This is it.”

God’s paths come with reassurance markers. Markers, such as Christian community, with friends and fellow pilgrims on the journey, are there to help us listen for God, to help point out signs that we are heading in the right direction, to pray for us as we reach a fork in the road and wonder, “Is this the right way?” Markers, such as commandments and Jesus’ teaching to reveal ways that lead to life and wholeness and spiritual well-being. Markers, such as the right person or thing that shows up at just the right time to remind us that God loves us more than we know. Markers that help us even if we wander off of God’s path, because God won’t abandon us in the woods, or anywhere.

But try to follow God’s paths, because God’s paths lead somewhere. Knowing where the paths go, where they lead, is important too. Life has meaning. Time has meaning. Here on this first Sunday of Advent we hear this reading from near the end of Luke’s Gospel, a glimpse into the end of time as we know it. Jesus will come again—who knows when, and who knows how exactly? But he will come. Time as we experience it now will come to an end. And for those who are faithful, for those who place their trust in God, the day of the Lord’s coming will be a time to stand up, lift up our heads and take heart, because our redemption draws near. God’s paths lead somewhere: all the way home to God.

We can run our own race and pay no attention to the lap counter or the shouts from the coach. So busy and distracted with our own labors, we won’t even know when it’s really time to keep going or to get off the track.

Or we can seek God’s paths. We can listen and pray and watch for reassurance markers. We can allow God to show us and teach us God’s paths. We can trust that all the paths of the Lord are love and faithfulness to those who keep God’s covenant and testimonies.

About that mountain I ...

Table of contents

• Title Page
• Foreword - Stephen E. Fowl
• Acknowledgments
• Introduction
• Chapter 1: Preparing Our Flesh to See God in the Flesh - Sermons for Advent
• Chapter 2: God With Us - Sermons for Christmas
• Chapter 3: A God We Can See, Hear, Taste, and Touch
• Bibliography