Sermons
Please visit again soon to read more sermons by Fr. Morse.
Fourth Sunday of Advent Cycle C (Children)
Today our Scripture lesson is about when the angel told the Virgin Mary that she would bear a child and His name would be Jesus. Mary was overjoyed and she prayed a prayer in which she gave thanks that God would honor her in this way. She was such a humble person and yet God had chosen her.
Last week we said that pride puffs us up and makes us thing that we’re more important than other people. Puffing up with pride made me think of a frog story.
Once upon a time there were two ducks and a frog who became friends. They had taken up mutual residence in a farmer’s pond. It was a hot, dry summer, however, and the pond began to dry up. The ducks could easily fly to another location, but not the poor frog. He had an idea. The ducks could pick up a stick in their bills, like this one, with each holding onto one end. The frog, then, could clamp his jaws around the middle of the stick and as the ducks flew to a new location, he could ride along. It worked beautifully. They hopped from one pond to another.
One day as they were flying two farmers caught sight of them. One said to the other, “What an ingenious idea! I wonder who thought it up.” The frog said, “I diiiiiiiiiiiiiiid!” Plop! What happened? When he took credit for the ingenious idea, he let go of the stick, didn’t he? He fell because he was proud.
Christmas is a time when we honor the humble, the insignificant, the small. It is not a time of puffing ourselves up like the old frog. It is a time of bowing before the little babe of Bethlehem and offering him our hearts.
(Show your toy.) Say: I went shopping yesterday and looked and looked. Finally I found this _______. I thought it was the very best toy I could buy. I brought it home and showed my family. They were impressed also. We all thought it would be a superb gift for (name someone that you would give it to.) After dinner last evening (name one of your friends) came over. You’ll never guess what he/she had. It was a bigger, better, prettier model of (hold your toy up) this. (Describe details of how the other one was better.) How do you think I felt? How would you feel? Maybe a little jealous? There is a story in the Bible about this very type of thing. Elizabeth was very old and had no child. Finally, after many years, God sent her a very special son. He told her to name him John. He would announce the coming Messiah. I can just imagine how excited Elizabeth was! Not only to finally have a baby boy, but one sent from God with a special job to do. She must have felt very blest. One day her cousin, Mary, came to visit her. As soon as Elizabeth saw Mary, the baby inside of her jumped for joy. Elizabeth felt God’s Spirit in her and instantly knew that Mary’s baby would be the Messiah. Mary’s baby was even more important than her own. How do you think she felt? Well, she was not jealous at all. She started praising God saying how blessed Mary was! We can learn a very important lesson from Elizabeth. When we already have what we need, we should be happy for others when they have what appears to be better. That isn’t always easy to do, but God will always help us to do the right thing.
Prayer: Thank you for the story of Elizabeth to teach us to rejoice with others. Help us to always remember how much you love each of us. Amen.
Fourth Sunday of Advent Cycle C (3)
The Gospel of Luke, above all books of the New Testament, is about women. It reads as if a woman might have written it. It contains intimate details which hardly would have occurred to a man. It begins with the birth of John the Baptist, focusing on Elizabeth, his mother. The next major section is Mary’s story. To her we will shortly return. There follows the prophecy of an old woman named Anna. When the boy Jesus went to the temple to debate the learned doctors, the only person Luke quotes is his mother.
Many of Luke’s stories from Jesus’ ministry are about women: the woman who was a sinner, the woman who wouldn’t give up, the widow of Nain, the bent over woman, the widow who gave her mighty mites. At the resurrection it was only women who had the faith to go to the garden of graves. The text lists Mary Magdalene, Joanna, Mary the mother of Jesus, and other women. Luke reports that when they told the disciples about the empty tomb these men assumed it was an idle tale and did not believe them. And mind you, all of this from a culture in which women didn’t count.
The central character in the birth narrative, a story only told by Luke, is the person closest to the event, Mary. There are two ways over the years I have imagined this virgin queen. I have seen her as a frightened little girl, overwhelmed by events far beyond her control — just a simple, rural, unlettered child God had chosen to be the vessel of grace. One year, I referred to her as a teenager from Amazonia — a town much like Nazareth in terms of its place in the world of the powerful.
But there is another way to view Mary, a way more faithful to Luke’s text. Here we find a determined, strong, assertive woman; a model for all women — a woman of power and influence: educated, sharp, committed. It is the resourceful, competent, clear woman from whom Jesus learned much of what he knew about God’s will for him and for his world. It is a woman blessed.
The key to this understanding of Mary comes from the words at the heart of today’s text. We identify the poem Mary sung by the Latin translation of its first words, the “Magnificat,” “My soul magnifies the Lord.”
What do we know about her from Luke? Not very much really. We know the town where she lived, a dusty obscure village in the north, named Nazareth. Luke doesn’t identify her family. They were nobodies from noplace. We know she was engaged to Joseph, a carpenter, whose family had come from the south, from Bethlehem, the city of David. Beyond that Joseph is a faithful, courageous, loyal husband and father who protects his little family, and takes them out of harm’s way when Herod the King, in his raging, seeks to destroy the infants of Bethlehem. But Luke reports not a word Joseph spoke, or even what he thought about anything.
We know that one day Mary receives a visitor, a messenger, imaged for us as the angel Gabriel. He tells her not to be afraid when she discovers she is pregnant. She has been chosen, favored, to play an important role in world history. Upon hearing the news, “she was greatly troubled,” says our text. I imagine she was! It is not every day an angel tells an expectant mother the child she is carrying is to be called, “the Son of the Most High.” He is to be a King, destined to sit on the throne of David forever.
When she was certain of the pregnancy, Mary does a very feminine thing. She seeks out another woman to talk to. She hears that her cousin, Elizabeth, is also pregnant. Mary makes the very long trip south to the hill country of Judea to visit her friend and her kinswoman. She stays three months. A veil is placed over the details of their conversation. We do not know what they discussed. Had it been a man who had something important to talk about with a male friend, the whole thing would probably have been over in a couple of hours. Men, you see, are seldom able to talk intimately with other men. Perhaps we are too competitive. Perhaps to talk deeply is to share more about ourselves and our weaknesses than men are comfortable revealing. If somebody knows about what’s going on down inside, he may have an advantage over you. For whatever reasons, it is women who can spend endless hours, days and weeks nestled comfortably in each other’s souls.
We do know that Elizabeth realizes something important has happened to Mary, that she has found favor with God and is blessed among women — and she says so. Again, men will hardly offer that gentle kind of affirmation to other men. We might slap each other on the back, but there won’t be much tenderness about it. Not so with women. Mutual support, cooperation, kinship, gentleness often lie at the heart of their important conversations — not competition, who is the stronger, richer or smarter.
In the musical, My Fair Lady, the leading male character asks, “Why can’t a woman be more like a man?” I’m not certain the world now needs a new crop of competitive, masculine women. The world has enough of competition, jousting for honored places, dog eat dog, crawl, scratch and kick your way to the top of the pile. That lifestyle is what causes wars and always has. Perhaps the question for our day is, “Why can’t a man be more like a woman,” more cooperative than competitive, more intimate than public, more accepting of others than needing to parade the colors, wave the sword and perpetually seek to prove who’s number one?
Whatever the nature of this three-month-long conversation, the result, heard from Mary’s lips, is anything but the song of a frightened, sweet, ignorant, submissive girl. She sings: “My soul magnifies the Lord, and my spirit rejoices in God my Savior.”
It is not an original song. Much of it comes from a thousand years earlier. Another strong woman, named Hannah, realizes she is pregnant. Her child too will change the direction of Israel. She will call him Samuel, and he will finally anoint David King. Hannah sings:
My heart exalts in the Lord;
my strength is exalted in the Lord.
The bows of the mighty are broken,
but the feeble gird on strength.
The Lord makes the poor rich,
he brings low, he also exalts.
He raises the poor from the dust
and lifts the needy.
Ten centuries later Mary sings:
He has shown strength with his arm,
he has scattered the proud …
He has put down the mighty from their thrones,
and exalted those of low degree.
He has fulfilled the hungry with good things,
and the rich he has sent empty away.
Could Mary have known Hannah’s song? If so, she was not the illiterate simple girl we have often pictured her as being. Educated, knowledgeable about the scriptures, aware of the dynamics of history and tuned in to the will and plan of God — that’s the Mary of the Magnificat.
I have often wondered where Jesus got his view of the world. How is it he identified with the poor, and had such a difficult time with the mighty? Why was he so unmasculine in his rejection of the sword, of violence as the way of the future, of competition as the source of power and wealth? Where did he get the idea that was to be the lynchpin of his life; that abundance did not lie in doing well but in doing good? Where did he come upon the notion that God demanded compassion, gentleness, humility; that the meek would inherit the earth, the merciful obtain mercy, the pure in heart see God and the peacemakersbe called God’s children?
Listen to the words of Mary’s song and you will discover where Jesus got his image of the world and of the will of God. He got it at the knee of his mother. Could it be these were the things Mary and Elizabeth talked about for three months?
Some time ago the two most powerful men in the world met on a ship off the coast of Malta. There they discussed big things, things of import and influence. But perhaps these great men do not have an iota of the influence on the world as did two simple women, who met for three months at the home of one of them somewhere in the hill country of Judah, and talked.
From their long conversation comes a song, a reflection of Hannah’s song of long ago. And from that song has come to us the ethic of Jesus of Nazareth, Prince of Peace, savior of the world.
Blessed are you, Mary, blessed are you among women. And blessed is the fruit of your womb, Jesus. And blessed are all those who hear him, believe him, follow him in the ways of peace and justice and love. ”
Fourth Sunday of Advent Cycle C (2)
Today’s Gospel presents two pregnant women, Mary and Elizabeth, in that wonderful meeting we refer to as the Visitation. The Angel Gabriel told Mary what God’s plan was for her, and she accepted the hand of God in her life, “Behold the handmaid of the Lord.” Gabriel also told her about her kinswoman, Elizabeth, an older lady who was now with child. Mary knew that she had to go to Elizabeth. Why? To help Elizabeth with the childbirth? Probably not. After all, Elizabeth was the wife of the priest Zechariah who was high enough in rank to be chosen to offer the sacrifice in the Holy of Holies. There had to be plenty of women around Elizabeth to help her. Why then did Mary proceed with haste to the hill country of Judah to be with Elizabeth? Mary must have understood that God wanted her to be there before John the Baptist would be born. Elizabeth was in her sixth month. Mary had to hurry. She had to travel from Nazareth in Galilee to the hill country of Judea. Perhaps her parents, Anne and Joachim, joined her on the dangerous trip. Or maybe it was Joseph, her betrothed. We really don’t know other than she could not have gone on the journey alone. Somehow Mary knew that it was part of God’s plan for the two pregnant women to allow the babies they were carrying to come close to each other. Elizabeth said that as soon as she heard Mary’s greeting the baby within her leaped for joy. This was more than John giving his mother, Elizabeth, a good kick. Some spiritual writers posit that his proximity to the about-to-be born Jesus resulted in the Holy Spirit coming upon the soon-to-be born John.
I would like to speak about Mary and Elizabeth as women of prophecy.
The prophecy of Mary’s role began in Genesis. The wise scholars of Genesis, under the guidance of the Holy Spirit, wrote that immediately after the Fall, after Eve convinced Adam that they should eat the fruit of pride, arrogance and disobedience, and be like gods themselves, as the serpent said they would be, immediately God said that another woman would come whose child would destroy the power of evil in the world, the hold of the devil. This woman, of course, was Mary. As time went on the prophet Isaiah declared to King Ahaz that God would give a special sign to the House of David. A virgin would be with child. She will have a son. He will be named Immanuel. It was quite clear that she would be a virgin and yet would be pregnant.
The mystery of how this could happen was solved in the fullness of time. I love that phrase fullness of time. It means when God, the One who was beyond time, says the time was right in the economy of salvation. The angel appeared to Mary, and Mary agreed to allow the prophecy to be fulfilled in her. The fact that Mary was a common, everyday Hebrew girl, not a princess in a palace, was significant. As Mary would tell Elizabeth, she, a lowly servant of God, would be raised up. All generations would call her blessed. Only God could do this. To this day we call her the Blessed Virgin Mary.
The ancient prophets did not predict anything that referred directly to Elizabeth, but Elizabeth was firmly part of the Biblical tradition of very special women. Like Isaac’s mother, Sarah, like Samson’s mother, the wife of Manoah, like Samuel’s
mother, Hanna, Elizabeth, a woman past child bearing years, would be chosen so that her child could demonstrate from the very beginning of is life the miraculous hand of God. This child was to have a significant role in God’s plan for the salvation of mankind. Isaiah said that one would come who would be a voice in the wilderness calling out, “Prepare the way of the Lord.” In the very last words of Hebrew Scripture, the Old Testament, Malachi prophesied, “Lo, I will send you Elijah the prophet before the day of the Lord comes, to turn the hearts of fathers to their children and children to their fathers.” John the Baptist came just like Elijah, in the wilderness, wearing clothing made of camel’s hair, a leather belt, and eating locusts and wild honey. His baptism called fathers to look to their children’s future and prepare the way of the Lord. He taught children to look to the new wisdom of their fathers and prepare to meet their Savior.
Mary and Elizabeth were participants in the transformation of the world into the Kingdom of God. Elizabeth’s child would point to Mary’s child and call him the Lamb of God who would take away the sins of the world. The birth, life, death and resurrection of Mary’s child would be the central event of human history. Prophets said that a Messiah would come. Prophets said that one would come who would prepare the way of the Lord.
We are the benefactors of the prophecy. We are the people God came to save. We are the people called to usher in the End Times, the day of the Lord. We are to proclaim with our lives that the Kingdom of God is upon us.
Behold! Behold the birth of John the Baptist, the last of the Old Testament Prophets and the first of the New Testament Prophets. Behold the birth of Jesus. Behold the one whom all of creation is calling out to come.
This is the mystery that excites us. It is the same mystery that excited Mary and Elizabeth. They realized that they had each in their own way been chosen to be vehicles of God’s plan of love. Elizabeth’s son, John the Baptist, would point to this Love become flesh. Jesus, Mary’s son, would be this love. We also have been chosen to be part of this plan by the One who loves us and who calls us to make His Love a reality for others.
God is the King. He is the Divine Lover. We are the object of His love. Only God would love so much that He would become one of us to win our love. St. Ireneus, an early doctor of the Church, wrote, “Because of his great love for us, Jesus, the Word of God, became what we are in order to make us what he is himself.”
With deep gratitude we pray: Lord of all love, you have come to us so we can come to you. You have become physical so we can become spiritual. You have embraced us with your Love so we can embrace others with your love. We thank you for choosing us to be part of your plan. We thank you for allowing us to join Mary and Elizabeth in the excitement of your Coming Presence. We ask you now to give us the strength and the courage to proclaim your Presence with our Lives.
Fourth Sunday of Advent Cycle C (1)
Some of you grew up in a small town, so you can identify with some of those lists that begin with “You know you live in a small town when . . .” For example,
City limits signs are both on the same post.
Traffic light in McSherrystown
Your car breaks down outside of town and news of it gets back to town before you do.
Without thinking, you wave to all oncoming traffic.
You know you live in a small town when the New Year’s baby is born in October.
A “Night on the Town” takes only 11 minutes.
The local phone book has only one yellow page.
You know you live in a small town when you call a wrong number and they supply you with the correct one.
It takes 30 seconds to reach your destination and it’s clear across town.
Well, you get the idea. Small towns don’t get much respect.
Abraham Lincoln, generally acknowledged as our greatest president, hailed from Knob Creek, Kentucky which was so small it no longer exists.
President Jimmy Carter, of course, still calls Plains, Georgia home. Plains has a grand population of 611. You don’t have to be a big city to produce a big person.
Of course, the greatest person who ever lived came from a small town in one of the unlikeliest places on Earth. We read in Micah 5 these beautiful words, “But you, Bethlehem Ephrathah, though you are small among the clans of Judah, out of you will come for me one who will be ruler over Israel . . .”
These words were written 700 years before Caesar Augustus issued his decree that a census should be taken of the entire Roman world . . . a census that required Joseph and Mary, his young bride-to-be, to travel from their home in Nazareth to Bethlehem because Joseph belonged to the house and lineage of David. You know the story, probably by heart.
The time came for the baby to be born, and she gave birth to her firstborn, a son. She wrapped him in cloths and placed him in a manger, because there was no room available for them in the inn. And there were shepherds living out in the fields nearby, keeping watch over their flocks at night.
“Let’s go to Bethlehem and see this thing that has happened . . .” The world didn’t know it, but all the truly important people on earth were huddled in a stable that night long ago in the tiny town six miles outside of Jerusalem known as Bethlehem. In the world’s estimation the important people were in Rome–Augustus Caesar, his household and the Roman senate–but we know better. In August, 1865, shortly after the Civil war, the parishioners of Holy Trinity Church in Philadelphia sent their pasor, Phillips Brooks, abroad for a year. His travels took him through Europe, and in December to the Holy Land. There he traced the footsteps of Jesus southward and visited the scenes of the Bible narrative. After two weeks spent in Jerusalem, Christmas Eve found him in Bethlehem at the birthplace of Jesus. Of his stirring emotions on that “Holy Night,” he later wrote to his Sunday school back in Philadelphia. He said, “I remember standing in the old church in Bethlehem, close to the spot where Jesus was born. The whole church was ringing hour after hour with splendid hymns of praise to God. It was as if I could hear angelic voices telling each other of the Wonderful Night of our dear Savior’s birth.”
Two years later, in 1867, Brooks put his pen to paper and wrote these immortal words:
“O little town of Bethlehem, how still we see thee lie!
Above thy deep and dreamless sleep the silent stars go by.
Yet in thy dark streets shineth the everlasting Light;
The hopes and fears of all the years are met in thee tonight.” (1)
The prophet Micah, who first announced where Christ would be born, was a contemporary of the prophet Isaiah. Not as well known as Isaiah, Micah still helped shape Israel’s national character. His inspired preaching against injustice eventually brought Hezekiah the king to repentance and, in doing so, saved Israel (Jeremiah 26:17-19). During this time there was a shocking contrast within both Judah and Israel between the extremely rich and the oppressed poor.
Bethlehem means house of bread. “Sounds more like a home for the Pillsbury Dough Boy,” says one author, “than it does the birthplace of a king.” (2)It is profound, don’t you think, that God would raise the one who would be the “bread of life” from the so-called “house of bread?”
As someone has written: “Bread is one of life’s most common things. God wanted His Son available to all. His birth was announced to shepherds, the common man, but not to the religious elite nor to those with political clout.
The birth of Jesus also made possible a new way of living. We hear people ask, why can’t we keep the Christmas spirit all year long? And the answer is, of course, that is why Christ came–that we might keep his spirit all year long. The Christmas spirit is no more than the way the follower of Jesus is to live every day of his or her life–showing kindness to strangers; treating all people regardless of their station in life with respect; being generous with the poor and compassionate with the wayward. That’s not an aberration. That is simply living the Christ life.
Helmut Nausner is a well-known Methodist pastor living in Austria. He tells of a Christmas Eve during the Nazi occupation when he was very young. His father was away, so his mother gathered the children around her to read the Christmas story and to pray. As they did they could hear the soldiers outside their windows, marching the streets, patrolling the curfew, and enforcing the orders forbidding religious celebration. They were very quiet.
During the reading and praying, young Helmut kept wondering what his mother would do about the music. Poor as they were, they had a piano that was used for house services where his Papa preached and his Mama played the hymns. Mama, he said, loved the Christmas music, but surely the soldiers would hear if they sang. “What would they do to Mama and to us?” he wondered.
When they finished their reading and prayers, Helmut’s youngest sister asked, “Mama, aren’t we going to sing?” With only a moment’s hesitation, his mother answered, “Tonight we celebrate the coming of the Christ Child into our world. He came that we might never be afraid any more. Of course we are going to sing.”
So she gathered her brood about her and they sang, “O come, all ye faithful, joyful and triumphant. Come ye, O come ye, to Bethlehem.” (7)
You and I don’t have to sing in fear this morning–all fear has been taken away.
Everyone is looking out for the little guy, but it’s hard to know who the little guy is. Of course, every presidential candidate wants to lift the little guy up—that’s why they’re running. For most it’s the middle class which has been kicked around for the past two decades. For some it’s the corporations who have been deluged, as they put it, by reams of regulations which keep them from making money. For others, it’s big corporation executives who have been getting such bad press. For a few it’s the hourly wage earner at the bottom: $15 an hour, and nothing less. You don’t hear much about those living in poverty, but I’m sure someone is rooting for them. If you are an immigrant, or a Muslim immigrant, you’re almost so little everyone has forgotten you even exist, except to double-check your visa or your papers.
We see how “little-guy” God thinks in the Gospel when Mary, who has just received this astonishing revelation through the Archangel Gabriel, doesn’t prance around Nazareth like a queen; rather, she runs through the hills, hastening toward the house of Elizabeth, the elderly woman who has become pregnant and who surely needs help. Elizabeth says: “Who am I that the mother of my Lord should come to me?” Yes, Mary knows she’s among the little guys.
Because Christmas is mostly for those so small, so overlooked, so desperate, they only have dreams and hopes to live on. God’s definition of a “little guy” is this: one who never looks down on another because “little guys” already know they are at the bottom. For many people it’s the bottom of the pecking order, or the economic ladder.
It turns out that Jesus himself, the new King whose birth we closely await, is himself a little guy. For his life is defined not in terms of what he gets but in terms of what he gives. The second reading give us the angle on this: upon entering the world, Jesus says that he lives to accomplish the will of his Father, the desire of Absolute love—to give himself that everyone else’s life may be deepened, enriched, fulfilled, and redeemed. To give himself, showing us the pattern of divine life: that we are great only insofar as we live for others, especially those overlooked by fame and fortune.
In a few days we celebrate the feast of Christmas—the Incarnation, which is the big word we use—when the Word becomes flesh. When this happens, all flesh is changed, even the lowliest flesh. God is reaching down, as far as God can. And who are we to think we don’t have to?
So Mary runs through the woods, a simple young woman rushing to help a simple older woman. Elizabeth’s baby, John the Baptist, leaps for joy because God’s love for the lowly reaches even into the womb. No one is discarded in the eyes of God. Every life makes a claim on divine love, for none is too little. That’s why he comes as a baby, a child. Jesus comes to accomplish his destiny of love and show us, in the end, we can all be little guys, the blessed, if only we realize the depth of our need for him.
