WRITTEN THINGS
Sermons • Songs • Etceteras
 images L-R: "Tamar Belle-Fille De Juda, 1960” (Marc Chagall) | “Rahab” (artist unknown) | "Ruth Takes Away the Barley" (James J. Tissot) | “Bathsheba" (Marc Chagall: 1962–1963) This sermon was first preached at Augustana Lutheran Church in Portland, OR on December 21, 2025. The full livestream of the service may be viewed here. (The sermon begins at the 41:49) Scripture texts: Isaiah 7:10-16 • Romans 1:1-7 • Matthew 1:(1-17) 18-25 Good morning, beloved of Christ!
This week I’ve been thinking a lot about ancestry. About how little I actually know about my own apart from each of my sets of grandparents, and the fact that I was named for my great-grandmother Amy. In fact, just this past summer I was talking to my parents about her over dinner, revisiting this old story they told about how her real name was Amelia Josephenie. But since my parents didn’t know that until I was 7 or 8 years old, they named me Amy Jo, as she was called, and I escaped being called such an old-timey name. I went on to share that over time, as I’ve grown older and wiser and, I like to think, more sophisticated, I lament my parents’ faulty knowledge. Because now, at 44, I would love such a beautiful and timeless name to be mine! Well, as I was retelling this, my mom was looking at me funnier and funnier, and by the time I was done, she said, “that’s not true. We never told you that! We always knew her name was Amelia, though they always called her Amy, and we picked Jo for your middle name because it was easy.” When I tell you, friends, how aghast I was! I swear I did not make that story up, and none of us know where the tale originated or how it became part of my personal lore. I suspect it was another one of my sisters’ tall tales, like when they all got together to convince me I was adopted. That was terrible. In any case, I have since learned through some digging that her full name was actually Amelia Henrietta Terry Craig, which is also beautiful, and makes me want to learn more about where she came from -- where I come from. But for today’s purposes, it just made me really interested in the part of Matthew chapter 1 that we skip over to begin at verse 18 in today’s gospel. So I’m going to take us back into it for a bit, not just because it lays the firm and vital foundation that Matthew’s entire gospel is built upon, though it does. What interests me is how much it tells us about who God is, and how God wanted to be known when God was born: Because Immanuel wasn’t born as some pristine out-of-nowhere starchild. He came as One who chose to make certain histories his own when he took on flesh and blood, and dwelt among us.
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 "Jesus Said Love Everyone" © J Kirk Richards A number of years ago I was sitting and talking with a very Calvinist family member about the nature of God and humans. Generally speaking, I hate those conversations because they aren't about contemplation, curiosity, or learning; instead, they're performative competitions to see who will say the "best" thing and who will say the "wrongest" thing. I especially hated these discussions with this particular person, because they were always trying, more than anyone else in the family, to prove they belonged: That they were smart enough, self-loathing enough, argued well enough to ride with the family. It often made them mean and cruel, both directly, in how they deliberately baited, mocked, and tried to humiliate me, and indirectly in how they egged others on to do the same. They were, I think, another black sheep in the world who found a place among my kin where, if they played it right, they could appear slightly more white next to me and a couple others, and they played as often as they could.
Anyway, at that point in time I was deeeeeeep in agnosticism and everything was a question. Which, for me, was so liberating. I'd never had permission to actually question or doubt or altogether scrap religious doctrines or ideas -- at least, not the deep deep ones I was told hold everything together -- but then the bottom fell out and everything I knew was in dust and pieces and the only thing you can do at that point is sift through the mess to see why and how it crumbled, and decide if it's worth reassembling, and with which bits. It made it so much easier and funner to engage the topics at hand, because I had nothing theologically to win or lose either way. I was free. Suffice to say, my family was not with me on that journey. So as we "discussed" (read: as this family member worked to talk me into a "gotcha" corner), we came around to this idea that God loves us. People. And this was the one thing I was (and am) steadfast about: If God exists (and that's a big IF), and made us, and made us in God's own image (i.e. "like and of God"), then God definitely and irrevocably loves us, full stop. That, I had already decided, was my baseline. They did not agree. In fact, for the next ten minutes they argued that God hates them and all the rest of us, and that this is right and good and holy. They contended that they are actually so abominable and disgraceful, so full of sin and shame and garbage, that they deserved all the medical hell they'd recently suffered, and infinitely worse. And that the only reason they didn't suffer and die from all that painful agony, the months spent in the hospital, is because they are "saved by Jesus" who died in their place and made it so when God looks at them, God only sees Jesus. Which is good, because God does Love Jesus. God really respects Jesus for all that suffering he endured to assuage God's wrath and satisfy God's rage. And however much God hates and despises them and the rest of us -- and boy howdy, they said, God really does hate and wants to send all of us to hell forever -- God loves Jesus even more. And that's how they're saved; that's how all salvation works. God loves and respects Jesus more than God hates the rest of us. As I listened, it didn't so much as stun me as it did quiet me all the way to my center. I had no idea that was what they thought about themself or what they truly believed about how God sees them and me and everyone. I told them, softly then, "I don't really know what to say about that." Weirdly, that made them drop their guard. They weren't used to the other party having no rebuttal (or at least passionately agreeing, as the choir must). They weren't used to someone not knowing what to say next. So the energy shifted and got a little rounder. And that's how we left it. Me, in the dead silence of their truth -- them with its deafening roar. In the hours and days and years that followed, my only and abiding thought was and remains: What if they knew they are loved? And not just loved, but lovable. What if they knew in their belly that God and other people really do love them, Jesus aside, and all sin and humanness considered: God loves them. We love them. (( I )) love them. Fully, irrevocably, without condition or caveat, just because they are made of love and wonder and God, and are inherently and indelibly lovable. What would they be like if they knew they cannot out-run or out-sin or out-anything their belovedness? |
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