When God Became Human, He Didn’t Find Things to be Beneath His Dignity to Do.

The Rev. Brad Sullivan

Lord of the Streets, Houston

January 12, 2025

1 Epiphany, C

Isaiah 43:1-7

Psalm 29

Luke 3:15-17, 21-22

Today, after the service, I have to leave to get to another church where I’ll be talking with them about Lord of the Streets, recruiting volunteers, and continuing to grow our connections with our supporting congregations. So, unfortunately, I won’t be here for breakfast, which I love, not just the food, but being with everybody. Usually, after breakfast, I join with our parishioners to help clean up, put tables and chairs away.

One morning about a year ago, I was cleaning up after breakfast with several parishioners, and someone else said, “You shouldn’t be doing this. You’ve got more important things to do.” I said, “Not really, cause for one, I like getting to be with our parishioners doing this work, and two, if I’m too good for cleaning tables and sweeping floors, then I’m not good enough to be preaching and serving at the altar.”

I bring that up because I think it has something to do with why Jesus got baptized. In seminary, this was a popular question.  Why did Jesus get baptized? He was without sin, right, so he had no need for baptism. We’re told in Matthew’s version that Jesus chose to be baptized to “fulfill all righteousness.” So then, of course, there were debates about what exactly that means. Jesus was already righteous. He was God. Nothing he did separated him from God, and he needed no reconciliation to be reunited with God. He was righteous. He had no need for forgiveness of sin. You could say he was too good for baptism, and you’d be right.

https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Baptism-of-Christ.jpg

So, what righteousness was Jesus fulfilling? Perhaps the righteousness of being human. The righteousness Jesus fulfilled was the righteousness of joining with humanity in every way. Jesus got baptized because we get baptized. While he was too good to need baptism, he wasn’t too good to be baptized. Jesus didn’t “regard equality with God as something to be exploited.” (Philippians 2:6) Baptism marks our repentance and our desire to be washed clean of everything that separates us from God and one another. Baptism is a physical and spiritual way that we choose to accept and live into our unity with God through Jesus.

We are baptized to embody our unity with God and the love, forgiveness, and grace God has for us, so when God became human, rather than claim to be above all of that, God joined with humanity even in humanity’s ways of joining with God. Even if he didn’t need baptism, Jesus wasn’t too good to be baptized. He wasn’t above that.

Perhaps, as followers of Jesus, there is a lesson there for us. When God became human, he didn’t find things to be beneath his dignity to do. Rather, God joined with us in all of our lives. Perhaps then, nothing is beneath any of our dignity to do as well.

Even forgiving others, which is part of what baptism is all about, the forgiveness of the harm we do. For us to forgive, we have to swallow our pride, to set aside the fact that forgiveness may not be deserved, and then choose to forgive anyway. That’s what God does, forgiving us, not necessarily because we deserve it, but because we need it. We need healing, and forgiveness brings healing, both for the one being forgiven and for the one doing the forgiving.

If God can forgive us and even be baptized with a baptism for forgiveness of sins, then, as hard as it may be, forgiving others is certainly not beneath our dignity. If being God didn’t put Jesus above forgiving others, then being human certainly doesn’t put any of us above forgiving others.

Now, in Luke’s version of Jesus’ baptism which we heard today, John talked about Jesus gathering the wheat of humanity into his granary and burning the chaff of humanity with unquenchable fire. That’s God’s job to do, not ours, and it is a job that we don’t fully understand. How exactly does God’s judgement work? Who or what is the chaff? Who or what is the wheat? We’ve got lots of answers, but if we’re being honest, we don’t fully know or understand. That’s because it’s God’s job to do, not ours.

What we do know is, God is unmistakably for us, and so we are meant to be for one another as well. When we judge one another, and we do judge one another, our judgments should be meant for healing, for reconciliation, for helping one another in this life. We can judge our behaviors as harmful or helpful, as loving or hateful.

Our judgments are not meant for determining who is the wheat and who is the chaff to be burned with unquenchable fire. When we make those determinations, we’re making ourselves equal with God, and not even God made himself equal to God when God became human.

So, when we judge, for example, we can judge that violence and settling our conflicts with our fists and weapons is harmful and terrible for us. Last week at breakfast a man felt disrespected when another asked him to quiet down during the prayer. Feeling disrespected, he became angry and attacked the other man, physically, rather than just taking a breath or using his words. That unquestionably the wrong thing to do. His violence at feeling disrespected didn’t help him. It just hurt everyone, and he had to leave over it.

At the same time, that man may have been doing the best he could do at that point. He seems to have been under far too much stress to condemn him simply as bad. He’d obviously been hurt in his life and dealing with so much that when he felt disrespected, he couldn’t do much of anything other than attack. He still had to go, but that doesn’t mean we condemn him. Hopefully he can come back.

Now, some might say that man is like the chaff which will be burned with unquenchable fire. Maybe, but again, if we make that determination, we make ourselves equal with God. Perhaps, instead of the man being the chaff to be burned, the brokenness and hurt within the man is the chaff to be burned with unquenchable fire, and the healed, beloved, forgiven man is the wheat that will be gathered into God’s granary.

We don’t know, but that certainly seems possible, considering how even God chose to be baptized for forgiveness of sins, not because he needed the baptism, but because we do, and God didn’t find joining with us in our baptism to be beneath him. Rather, God chose to be with us and for us, showing us that we can be with and for one another as well. Even if being for one another means we walk into water that is dirty as sin, we can be for one another, knowing Jesus is there with us to gather us together with God.

The Only Threat We Face from Jesus: Greater Peace and Love.

The Rev. Brad Sullivan

Lord of the Streets, Houston

January 5, 2025

2 Christmas, C

Isaiah 61:10-62:3

Psalm 84

Matthew 2:1-12

King Herod feared that his power was going to be taken from him. He was king over Israel, but he was not accepted as much of a king by many because his Jewishness was in doubt by some. His family had been forcibly converted decades before, so there were questions. Was he truly Jewish in his heart, or was he just claiming to be Jewish because by doing so he got to remain as king. We don’t really know his heart, but we do know that his kingship was in question by some and his kingdom was under Roman rule, so his hold on power was not as strong as he would have liked. 

With this challenging political atmosphere, there suddenly arrived these foreign, mystic, astrologer type folks, these magi from the east, who came to Herod claiming the birth of a new Jewish king. Ok, it’s one thing if some of Herod’s subject claim a new king was born. He could just imprison them or kill them, but for people from another country to come to him claiming a new Jewish king has been born, well that means that potentially an entire other nation believes that Herod is no longer king of Israel, but that this new baby is now the Jewish king instead of Herod. 

Now, Herod was at least Jewish enough to know that the prophets had foretold the birth of a Messiah, one who would be the forever king to replace all other kings. Herod knew that this baby, whom foreigners were claiming to be King of the Jews, might have been this God-anointed forever-king, and rather than figure, “Cool, that’s God’s will; let’s go with this,” Herod wanted to keep his power and therefore wanted to kill Jesus. 

He lied to the Magi, telling them he wanted to pay homage to Jesus, and as we find just after the portion of the Gospel we heard today, Herod indeed tried to kill Jesus. Fear had a tight grip on Herod.

“Keep my power,” Herod thought. Even if it goes against God’s will. Even if I have to kill a baby to do it. “Keep my power.” 

Herod is, of course, not the only person to live in fear and do terrible things to try to keep his power. On new year’s day, a man killed at least 14 people in New Orleans, and he was trying to kill a whole lot more. We’re not sure what power he wanted to keep, but we can bet there was some kind of power he felt he or others no longer had. Terrorists kill to try to get power back from those they feel have taken it from them.

Look at our political elections where people routinely lie and intentionally just make stuff up in order to win elections and keep power. People in business spend countless millions of dollars to influence laws and regulations so that their businesses get to keep their power, their market share, their profit. People who are angry at another will fight, steal from, and even kill to keep or reclaim their power. 

Like Herod, when it comes to keeping our power, there seems no limit to what we humans are willing to do. “We wouldn’t kill babies, of course,” we tell ourselves, “not like Herod.” Well, if we lived in Herod’s day, raised by Herod’s parents, and in that precarious kingship like Herod, we may well have tried to kill Jesus just like Herod did.

For those who are still sure that they wouldn’t have done that, the point is not whose sin is worse than whose. The point is, all of us are in the grip of fear, and all of us fight against God’s will in order to keep our power. Every single person in this world fights against God’s will in order to keep their power, and even more importantly, this is the world, and we are the people God chose to save. 

There must be something pretty darn fantastic about us if God chose to save us in this world, as this world is, and as we are, constantly fighting God’s will to keep our power, God chose to save us, and to do so, God became one of us. 

Amidst all of our crud, and we’ve got a lot of crud, we must, at our core, be pretty fantastic indeed if God chose to become one of us. We lie, we cheat, we steal, and yet God sees something in us that is astoundingly beautiful. God sees something in us far more beautiful than we can know or see. I daresay, if we saw what God sees, then we might wouldn’t be so terrible to one another. 

Perhaps, if we saw what God sees in one another, then we wouldn’t be so keen to hold onto power or to wrest power away from others. We might forgive a little easier, be a little slower to anger, assume something better than the worst in others, if we could see just how wonderful God sees us all being. 

I have a feeling that if we could see what God sees, we’d be blown away by how much bigger and more beautiful this world is, how much bigger and more beautiful this life is than we can know and see. Our hearts would be filled with the love and peace of God, and we would no longer be afraid. Seeing this world and this life as God sees it, we would no longer be afraid of losing our power, because we’d see that all of our power is contained within God’s power. We would no longer be afraid even of losing our lives, because we would see that our lives are all contained within God’s life. 

That is the love and peace Jesus had as he lost all earthly power and as he lost his life on the cross. Jesus could see his power and his life bound up together within God’s power and life, and so Jesus was at peace. He wasn’t happy about being killed; he didn’t love it, but he was at peace. 

The times when we find Jesus seemingly not at peace are not the times when people tried to take his power, but the times when Jesus saw us taking one another’s power, treating one another terribly. That’s when Jesus wasn’t at peace, when he saw people harming one another. That’s because he sees us as we truly are. He sees the life and beauty within us that we are so often too blinded by fear to see. Where Jesus sees a beautiful and beloved brother or sister, we often see a threat, like Herod did.

A beautiful baby was born, the beauty of scripture was fulfilled, and a life of hope and promise was brought into this wonderful world, and all Herod saw was a threat. 

Jesus, of course, wasn’t a threat. He wasn’t a threat to Herod, to his rule, or to his power. Jesus wasn’t trying take any of that way from Herod. No, the only threat Jesus posed to Herod was that if he had still been alive when Jesus began his ministry, Herod might have heard Jesus’ teachings, seen Jesus’ miracles, believed in Jesus’ and changed his ways to follow the way, the truth, and the life of Jesus. I daresay, Herod would have found a great deal of peace and love if he had done that. 

Finding greater peace and love, that’s the only threat we face from Jesus as well. If we choose to believe in him, if we choose to follow him as the way, the truth, and the life, then we just might find greater peace and love within ourselves. Doing so will change our lives, change our ways. We may give up or give away some of our power for the sake of others. We may find peace enough not to constantly try to wrest power from others. 

Our lives do indeed change when we choose to believe in Jesus and follow Jesus. We begin to see others as he sees us. We begin to see the world as he sees it. Fear begins to lose its hold on us, and we fall instead into the arms of peace and love. That’s the threat that Jesus poses to us. No taking our place, no taking our power, just falling into the arms of peace and love.

Do not be afraid, for the Word has become flesh...

 The Rev. Brad Sullivan

Lord of the Streets, Houston
December 29, 2024
1 Christmas, C
Isaiah 61:10-62:3
Psalm 147
John 1:1-18 

“[Mary] gave birth to her firstborn son and wrapped him in bands of cloth, and laid him in a manger, because there was no place for them in the inn.” “And the Word became flesh and lived among us, and we have seen his glory, the glory as of a father's only son, full of grace and truth.”

When Jesus was born, the Word of God became human. The Word of God which spoke creation into existence became human. The word of God which gave the law of Israel became human. The Word of God which spoke through the prophets became human, and most importantly of all, the Word of God which is God became human.

When God became human, an angel of the Lord went to nearby shepherds and told them, “Do not be afraid, for see, I am bringing you good news of great joy for all the people: to you is born this day in the city of David a Savior, who is the Messiah, the Lord.”

That little baby, wrapped in bands of cloth, surrounded by family and no small amount of animals was God born among us as the human child, Jesus. The good news of great joy is that God became human and was born among us, as one of us, uniting all that we are in perfect union with God.

That’s good news of great joy, and yet we so often hear it told as remarkably bad news, don’t we. “If you don’t believe in Jesus, God’s gonna get you,” right? We do talk a lot about God’s judgement of the wicked, the unjust, and those who gain wealth by oppressing others. Thank God, God has judgement on such people.

Here’s the good news: even that judgement and that wickedness has been united to God in Jesus. That’s the whole point of the incarnation, of the Word of God becoming human; everything about us has been united to God. Nothing can separate us from God and God’s love. Amidst all the storms and crud of life all around us, we are perfectly united to God: in our faith, in our fears, in our kindness and in our sins. We are forever one with God through that baby wrapped in bands of cloth and lying in a manger.

Now, I said earlier that Jesus, in the manger, was surrounded family as well as all the animals. I don’t just mean Mary and Joseph. As much as I love our manger scenes with more cows and sheep than people, as in a barn set away from the house, that was almost certainly not the case. The room where they were was attached to and part of the house where animals could be kept. They were probably at the home of a family member. So, Jesus was surrounded by Mary, Joseph, and other family members celebrating the birth of Mary’s firstborn son, and they were surrounded by animals.

Thinking of this manger scene of family and animals, I was reminded of Noah’s ark. The Manger, the birth of Jesus, was like a little ark, a little sanctuary amidst the flood of all the crazy that was going on around them. Rome was oppressing the Jewish people, there were fanatical religious leaders calling for armed rebellion, tax collectors and soldiers were extorting money from people, and as it turned out, the king of Israel was a crazy enough dude that he thought murdering babies was a good idea.

So yeah, life was like a terrible flood of crazy all around and in the midst of that flood, you had this ark, this manger in which God was born among us surrounded by loved ones and animals, a safe place from the storm, and a new beginning.

On that night, in that manger ark, our new life of perfect union with God began, and with that new life, God began once again God’s life of love among us. Remember that revolution of repentance I talked about last Sunday, Mary, singing her song of praise to God and of revolution on the earth? Remember, I said that God’s revolution for us is meant to change the crazy of the status quo not by violent revolution, but by the non-violent revolution of repentance? The next step is the non-violent revolution of love.

The Word of God became human because our union with God is what gives us the strength to love in the face of all of the crazy going on around us.

The strength to love in the face of oppression, the strength to love in the face of assault, the strength to love even in the face of murder and rape. That is the revolution of love that God gave us on that night when Jesus was born. We saw Jesus live out that revolution of love all the way through his death and into life everlasting beyond death.

We still see Jesus’ revolution of love being lived out among us in our world today. I think of the time after South African after apartheid. There was terrible violence and oppression during apartheid, and there was violence done in ending apartheid. Faced with this boiling rage among the people of South Africa, Nelson Mandella set up the Peace and Reconciliation Commission, and he asked Anglican Archbishop Desmond Tutu to lead the commission.

The commission offered amnesty for people involved in apartheid and in the violence done against apartheid. The commission sought truth from those who had harmed so many through their oppression and violence, and victims got to hear from those who had harmed them. The victims got to know that the perpetrators understood what they had done and see the humanity of their victims.

The work done through the Peace and Reconciliation Commission wasn’t perfect, and not everyone agreed with the work, but the work overall brought peace and reconciliation to a nation on the verge of collapse through conflict. Jesus’ revolution of love paved the way for the people of South Africa to move beyond the hurts of the past and find some peace amidst the hurt and hatred, amidst storms of the crazy of life.

Archbishop Tutu wrote:

To forgive is…a process that does not exclude hatred and anger. These emotions are all part of being human. You should never hate yourself for hating others who do terrible things: the depth of your love is shown by the extent of your anger.

However, when I talk of forgiveness I mean the belief that you can come out the other side a better person. A better person than the one being consumed by anger and hatred. Remaining in that state locks you in a state of victimhood, making you almost dependent on the perpetrator.

If you can find it in yourself to forgive, then you are no longer chained to the perpetrator.

Freedom and salvation. Freedom from sin, including freedom from the sins of others. That is the salvation of Jesus and Jesus’ revolution of love. Gathering with Mary and Joseph, with family, and with animals around the manger and the babe wrapped in bands of cloth, we can rest in that ark of freedom and salvation amidst the storms of life around us. The Word of God has become human, uniting us perfectly with God. All of our faith, all of our fears, all of our kindness, and all of our sins have been united to God. So, “Do not be afraid, for we have been brought good news of great joy for all the people: to us is born…in the city of David a Savior, who is the Messiah, the Lord,” for the Word has become flesh and dwells among us.